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
Discussion (5 replies)
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If this gets rid of the fake accounts posting fake giveaways just to get followers I'm all for it.
Arguably twitter lost much of its relevancy since Musk took over, this would further drive it into irrelevancy.
This is not about bots, it is about cash flow, twitter is dying and Musk is desperate to generate income by whatever means necessary.
If it was really about bots they'd simply use the payment method to verify that you are an unique user. Just charge $2 then refund it a few days later. Like microsoft and I'm sure many others do to verify payment methods.
It’ll get rid of everybody. The only people that are willing to pay are because they want access to that audience of people that weren’t paying using the service.
Everyone will just migrate over to the next thing - once the free users leave there will be nothing left worth paying for
Yea... I tend to agree on reflection. Either the company will become MUCH smaller and sub based... (like.. a nitro member only discord server.) or have free accounts to keep it as a marketing device.