Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, is to charge all users subscription fees
Billionaire also says platform has 550 million monthly users generating
up to 200m posts a day
The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off
the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Elon
Musk. Picture: JOEL DAN MILMO
Elon Musk has indicated that X, formerly known as Twitter, is preparing
to charge all users for accessing the platform.
The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off
the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.
Speaking in a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime
minister, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest person suggested that X was
going to charge its user base. Currently, Twitter only charges users for
its subscription service X Premium, which offers perks such as a
verified account checkmark and costs €11 a month in Ireland.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,”
Musk said.
Saying that bots cost “a fraction of a penny” to set up, Musk added that
raising the cost of an account to “a few dollars or something” could put
off operators of the software.
He added: “Plus, every time a bot creator wanted to make another bot,
they would need another new payment method.”
Musk also said X had 550 million monthly users generating up to 200m
posts a day. Previously, the platform had measured its user base by a
different method, monetisable daily active users, which stood at 238
million before Musk bought the business in October 2022.
Musk has raised the prospect of a paywall as the platform battles an
entrenched decline in advertising, its main source of income. Musk has
said an advertiser boycott, spurred by concerns over his leadership of
the platform and its management of inappropriate or hateful content, has
caused ad revenue to decline by 60%.
Musk’s conversation with Netanyahu was billed as a discussion about
technology and artificial intelligence but it quickly turned to free
speech and antisemitism amid accusations that X was not doing enough to
tackle racist speech on the platform.
Musk has used his account on X to say that he is “pro-free speech, but
against antisemitism of any kind”.
— Guardian
===========================================================
The fb-exchange mailing list
Manage account,
List Page: https://www.freelists.org/list/fb-exchange
Archive: https://www.freelists.org/archive/fb-exchange
To unsubscribe: log onto the List page and select "Unsubscribe".
Administrative contact: insight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
===========================================================