The social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, announced Tuesday that it has begun charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines to use basic features like posting messages.
X, owned since last year by the billionaire Elon Musk, said in a statement that its new subscription method should “bolster” existing efforts to reduce spam and “manipulation of our platform and bot activity.”
Under the trial, new web users in the Philippines and New Zealand will have to pay X around $0.75 and $0.85, respectively, every year, in order to access basic functionality like posting on the site.
Those who decline to pay the nominal fee will only have access to a “read-only” version of the platform, limiting them to reading posts, watching videos and following accounts, the company said.
“This will evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us combat bots and spammers on X while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount,” it added.
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Existing users in these countries are not affected.
Musk has made a number of controversial changes to the social media firm’s management and product since he acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.
He recently floated the idea of charging all users a nominal fee to use the site in a bid to tackle fake accounts — drawing sharp criticism from users around the world.
AFP
It sounds as if Elon Musk, madman that he is, is actually going to start charging to use the social network formerly known as Twitter.
As Fortune reports, X-formerly-Twitter will begin charging users in the Philippines and New Zealand the equivalent of one American dollar to access the site’s main features such as, you know, posting and retweeting — but don’t worry, you’ll still be able to “read for free.”
In a statement to Fortune given after the magazine broke the news, X confirmed the change and referred to it as a “test.”
“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,” an X spokesperson said. “It is not a profit driver.”
X support also announced the program, dubbed “Not a Bot,” in a statement posted to the site and its help center and clarified that the test would not affect existing users — but left open the possibility that a universal fee may be in the works.
“So far,” the statement read, “subscription options have proven to be the main solution that works at scale [to reduce spam and bots].”
Pipe Dream
The announcement comes almost exactly a month after Musk floated the idea of charging everyone to use Twitter.
“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” Musk told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — yes, we too are deeply puzzled — during a September livestream. “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.”
The concept has apparently been on the billionaire’s mind for a while now. Last November, an insider told Platformer that Musk and his adviser, podcaster David Sacks, were heard in meetings discussing putting Twitter behind a paywall not dissimilar from the ones used by news sites, which would allow people to browse for an allotted amount of time for free and then pay a subscription fee to continue.
Whether users will want to fork over their credit card information to Musk? We’ll have to see it to believe it.