Elon Musk has said that his social media site X (formerly known as Twitter) may charge users a fee to access the platform. The move is deemed necessary to tackle the bot problem that plagues the platform. Musk made his comments while speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Tesla and SpaceX chief stated, “We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system.”
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There is no confirmation from X, or Musk if this is just an idea or a soon-to-be-implemented protocol. Elon Musk has long teased the possibility of a fee on X to tackle the platform’s problem with bots. X already has a paid verification process where users can obtain a blue checkmark for a fee. However, the move has not helped reduce the number of bots that still run rampant on the social media platform.
How likely is Elon Musk to charge for X?
According to Musk, “A bot costs a fraction of a penny” to make. He added “But if somebody even has to pay a few dollars or something, some minor amount, the effective cost to bots is very high”. The platform’s premium user service currently costs $8 in the US. The cost differs in each country and is dependent on various economic factors.
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Musk said, “We’re actually going to come up with lower-tier pricing. So we just want it to be just a small amount of money. This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defense against vast armies of bots.”
Going by the tech billionaire’s statements, it is likely that the social media platform will soon charge a small fee from every user. However, this may lead to a large exodus of users to other rival platforms. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta recently launched Threads as a competitor to Elon Musk’s X. However, Zuckerberg’s platform has not gained a lot of traction as of yet. With that being said, if X decides to levy a fee on users, Treads may soon see a spike in new users.