X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like, bookmark, and create lists, according to a source familiar with the matter. This change will go live today for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines.
Roughly 20 minutes after this story published, X’s Support account confirmed the details, writing that “this new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.”
Starting today, we're testing a new program (Not A Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines. New, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected.
This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.
And so far, subscription options have proven to be the main solution that works at scale.
— Support (@Support) October 17, 2023
The company published the “Not-a-Bot Terms and Conditions” today outlining its plan for a paid subscription service that gives users certain abilities on their platform, like posting content and interacting with other users. This program is different from X Premium, which offers more features like “Undo” and “Edit” for posts for $8 a month. Given the company’s tumultuous reputation under Musk, some users have voiced their hesitancy to turn over their credit card info.
X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. During a livestreamed conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
Shortly after the announcement, Musk tweeted that you can “read for free, but $1/year to write.”
“It’s the only way to fight bots without blocking real users,” Musk wrote. “This won’t stop bots completely, but it will be 1000X harder to manipulate the platform.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino was asked last month onstage at Vox’s Code Conference about how going to a full subscription model on X will affect revenue, something that is now going live to users today. Yaccarino answered at the time, “Did he say that or did he say he’s thinking about it?”
I charge $1/month to send email on my email service. There’s a reason for that. It’s because it’s the smallest amount I can charge, and spammers are unlikely to pay anything, no matter how small, to send email. If they do, and I catch them, I’d probably be able to get their payment account suspended. So, I understand why this could be a good approach to combatting spam. Here’s the problem with Twitter doing it:
Elon has full control over the platform. It’s not like there are other providers that will block him if his users send a bunch of spam. He also has the ability to revoke all the messages that users have sent once they are discovered as spammers, whereas with email, once spam is sent, there’s nothing I can do about it.
Email is actually useful. Tweeting is just self promotion. No one coordinates their doctor appointment with Twitter.
Spam is basically the only thing keeping Twitter looking viable right now. Their users are leaving. Their advertisers are leaving. It’s maybe not the best time to be pushing the spammers away.
Elon’s whole mission or whatever is supposed to be “freeze peach”, but this goes against that. The “digital town square” where “everyone has a voice” can’t have a price tag.
I mean, it's hard to steer me away from regular old stupidity and incompetence. I'd like to understand the logic for why he would intentionally run his $44 billion investment into the ground.
My father, a boomer technophobe, could easily see every decision he's made has been foolish and stupid.
I am NOT in the "Musk is a supergenius" camp, but I'm incapable of believing he could be stupid enough to make every single one of these disastrous decisions by accident. That seems very clear to me even if I can't sus out the motive.
He's charging $1 a month to prevent bots on a site where bots have $8 blue checkmarks from stolen credit cards. He's gonna get visa and MasterCard knocking if he starts being associated with Jagex style ccard fraud.
100% The man just loves “big” ideas that sound good on paper to investors, but don’t actually add anything. Idk what the answer to bots is, but this ain’t it, chief.
For likes, maybe. Retweets? That's gotta be at least $100/month. That's not outside the standard for being able to reuse posts from websites like shutterstock, and other sharable media websites.
NZ and Philippines are often early test markets for western markets and asia respectively. I'm thinking it's likely that one of the marketing guys convinced Elon to slow his roll and that's why it's only rolling out to a small userbase, rather than being implemented for every user at once like his bad ideas always are.
Many other social media has bots, what is different from all other places?
The elite do use Twitter for politics and news, though. Media people will stay so as to not be out of the loop and others will just be lurkers...
It seems to be a pay wall, for sharing opinions, so I think people will gravitate to supporting certain people that share their views. Hard to tell what will happen though...
The general stupidity of this aside that's something I'd actually be willing to pay for any and every online service I use even semi-regularly. Provided it would also help fight against tracking and hide ads.
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like, bookmark, and create list, according to a source familiar with the matter
X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform.
During a recent livestreamed conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
The company also published “Not-a-Bot Terms and Conditions” today outlining its plan for a paid subscription service that gives users certain abilities on their platform, like posting content and interacting with other users.
This story is developing.
Please check back later for updates.
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