Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of X, which used to be called Twitter, said the company is considering putting up a paywall for all users. During a live show on X with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk said that the primary goal of this move is to stop people from using bots so much on the platform.
“The biggest reason we’re moving towards a small monthly fee for using the X system is that it’s the only way I can think of to fight against huge armies of bots.”
He thinks the platform can lower the power of these automated accounts by adding a payment system and prioritizing the posts of premium users.
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Musk justified this decision by saying, “A bot costs a fraction of a penny, say a tenth of a penny, but even if it has to pay a few dollars or something, a small amount, the effective cost of bots is very high.”
Musk believes the paywall is necessary for X to combat bot activity. The billionaire entrepreneur also aims to offer a lower-tier price option to keep the barrier accessible to more consumers. We want a tiny amount of money, he said. It’s a long topic, but this is the sole defense against bot armies.”
Musk has talked with venture capitalist David Sacks about putting up a paywall for all X users, according to a story in the tech newsletter Platformer.
Does Elon Musk’s fee go against what X was supposed to be?
Elon Musk has significantly changed the platform since he bought it in October 2022. For example, he changed the name of Twitter to X. In March, he removed the platform’s old verified programme (blue ticks) and replaced it with the Twitter Blue payment service.
Musk made these changes as part of his plan to make the platform profitable. In July, Musk admitted that the company was having financial problems. He said, “We still have negative cash flow because advertising income has dropped by about 50%, and we have a lot of debt. We can’t do anything else until we have a positive cash flow.”
Since then, Musk has started and grown its creator monetisation programme to include a share of the ad revenue it makes from ads that show up in the replies to creators’ tweets. The company stated that this move is part of its plan to help people make more money from the time they spend on the app.
Creators who meet the Creator Monetization Standards are those who subscribe to Twitter Blue or are verified organizations, who have had more than 5 million tweet views per month in the last three months, and who pass a human review.