Twitter owner, Elon Musk, has hinted that new users of the platform may have to pay a “small annual fee” before being able to “post, like, bookmark, and reply.”
Responding to a query about the new charge on Monday, Musk said it is needed to combat the threat of bots that have plagued the site for years. Although he didn’t specify when the fee will take effect or how it will work, he said a fee “is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots” on X.
“The onslaught of fake accounts also uses up the available namespace, so many good handles are taken as a result.”
Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots.
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Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024
The fee that has been announced is similar to the $1 annual fee already introduced to new unverified users in New Zealand and the Philippines last October. The charge is part of X’s “Not a Bot” program, which the company says would “bolster” existing efforts to reduce spam and “manipulation of our platform and bot activity”.
Since purchasing X (formerly Twitter) in 2022, Musk has often vowed to reduce bots on the platform. Recently, the company initiated a massive purge of spam accounts. The effects had many many big accounts losing thousands of followers. Musk himself was one of the hardest hit, losing about 43k followers, according to an analysis done by Social Media Today.