When Elon Musk took over X, formerly Twitter, one of the many things he did was to introduce a subscription model for blue ticks. The move, however, faced a backlash from some celebrities, politicians and others alike. Musk may now be planning to further monetise the platform by introducing a ‘small monthly payment’ for using X. This means that X will go paid for all users and that everyone on the platform may have to pay a subscription fee to use it.
Musk floated the idea of subscription fee in a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that the company was “moving to a small monthly payment” for the use of the X system. He suggested that this change may be required to solve the bot problem on the platform.
Why Musk wants to introduce payments
Musk has been speaking against bots a lot and at one instance during negotiations, the ‘problem’ almost proved to be a deal breaker. During the conversation, he suggested that such a change will be helpful in bots problem.
“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 even if it has to pay…a few dollars or something, the effective cost of bots is very high,” Musk said.
He said with this payment move, bot creators would need another new payment method when they want to make more bots. Musk, however, did not say what the new subscription will cost but highlighted he was now looking at cheaper options for users.
“We’re actually going to come up with a lower tier pricing. So we just want it to be just a small amount of money,” he said.
“This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defence against vast armies of bots,” Musk added. The new subscription could pose a risk of losing users.
Having to make a payment to use X is not a new idea. Last year, a report by The Platformer claimed that Musk had discussed putting the entire site behind a paywall.