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Elon Musk has been toying with the idea of making X, formerly Twitter, as a paid site for quite some time now. Last year, during an interaction with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the billionaire said that the best way to deal with bot armies on the platform is by charging a “small amount of money.”
He said that a bot costs only a fraction of a penny and their running cost can go high if X starts charging a few dollars. Also, if the bot operator wanted to create another bot account, they will have to resort to a new payment method every time.
Now, Musk has confirmed that X will soon start charging a small fee for new users who want to post on the platform. He went on to say that current AI tools can easily bypass the “you’re a robot” tests. A recent piece of code spotted by Chris Messina also suggests that new unverified users will have to pay the annual fee before they can use certain functionalities such as like, bookmark and reply to posts.
New users who do not want to pay the fee will still be able to read posts and follow other accounts on the platform and those who choose not to pay the fee will be able to post on the platform after three months.
However, Musk is yet to share details on when the new changes will come into effect or how much new users will have to shell out to post, like and bookmark posts on the platform.
In October last year, soon after his interaction with Netanyahu, Musk started a new experiment called ‘Not A Bot’ program that required new users to pay a $1 fee if they wanted to interact with posts. The new user fee experiment was live in New Zealand and the Philippines, but it is still unclear how much the fee deterred bots from the platform.
