Tech billionaire Elon Musk has made known his intention to charge all X (formerly Twitter) users a monthly subscription fee to retain access to their accounts as part of efforts to crack down on bots and amid reports that the microblogging platform was battling a steep decline in ad revenue.
Mr Musk, on Monday, disclosed this while speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when asked how X could curtail the use of bots from amplifying anti-semitic posts on the platform.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system. It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots. Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny – call it a tenth of a penny – but if somebody even has to pay a few dollars, some minor amount, the effective cost of bots is very high,” said Mr Musk. “And then you also have to get a new payment method every time you have a new bot.”
The X honcho believes that erecting a paywall would dissuade the use of bots. But it would also be another way to generate revenue for X, given that the company lost at least 60 per cent of its revenue after the majority of its advertisers left over concerns about Mr Musk’s brute leadership.
Since the Tesla CEO acquired X for $44 billion last October, there have been sweeping changes across the entire organisation, including the renaming of the company from Twitter to X, the introduction of a monthly $8 fee for blue tick subscribers, a downsizing of more than 50 per cent of the platform’s staff and reinstatement of suspended accounts including that of former U.S. president Donald Trump.
It is unclear how much the tech mogul intends to charge users to maintain platform access.
Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta boss, recently launched Threads as an alternative app to rival X after numerous unhappy X users expressed interest in leaving the app.
