Elon Musk says he’s planning to charge ‘a small fee’ for new users to interact on X
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), says he is considering implementing “a small fee for new user[s]” to tackle the issue of automatised accounts, or “bots”.
Posting on the social media platform, he added that “current AI (and troll farms) can pass ‘are you a bot’ with ease”.
No details regarding how much the fee would be or its implementation date have been disclosed but Musk said that the measure would last three months in another post on X.
It will still be possible to access the social media without paying; however, new users would be prevented from creating content, tweeting, liking or bookmarking a post.
A similar measure started last October in New Zealand and the Philippines where new unverified users were charged €0.94 per year to interact with posts.
Currently, the only paid features for X are for premium subscribers which gives access to the monetisation programme, an ad-free version, access to X’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbot and more reply visibility.
The long-standing issue with bots
Musk has long been concerned regarding bots on Twitter, vowing to tackle the problem when he finalised his takeover of the platform in late 2022
However, the issue with bots have worsened, according to experts, and is now powered by AI.
The platform lost nearly a quarter of its US users since November 2022, the firm Sensor Tower told NBC News last month.
The value of the social media also plummeted and the company saw a decline in advertising revenues.
