Is this the beginning of the end for X, formerly known as Twitter? In a new interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multi-billionaire Elon Musk, who currently serves as Chairman and CTO for the newly named platform, revealed that X will begin charging its users a monthly subscription fee. Musk explained that he wants to do this in order to combat bots, although advertising revenue may also have something to do with it, with it being down 60% for reasons that allegedly include anti-Semitism, according to a tweet that he shared earlier this month. Pricing hasn’t been disclosed, but Musk said it should be cheaper than X Premium, which starts at $8/month for web users in the U.S.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” Musk said.
“The single-most important reason we’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system is it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” he added.
Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2023