Elon Musk said Monday he plans on “moving toward having a small monthly payment for use of the X system” in an effort to keep bots off the platform. The plan is coming months after he introduced monetized features on the platform.
Musk announced the move during a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently visiting the US.
The conversation was based on stopping anti-Semitism on X, formerly Twitter. The world’s richest man said X will come out with a “lower tier of pricing” of “a small amount of money” that all users would have to pay, in addition to the premium service, X Blue.
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Musk, who attributed the growing cases of anti-Semitism on X to bots, said that creating a paywall is “the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
He was responding to Netanyahu’s statements that curbing anti-Semitism on X might require preventing the use of bots on the platform.
The Tesla CEO explained that bots cost “a fraction of a penny,” but if to use X, a user had to pay “a few dollars” or “some minor amount” it would make the effective cost of creating a large amount of bots “very high.”
He had sought to back out of Twitter acquisition deal last year, citing an overwhelming number of bots on the platform – but was forced to complete the deal after Twitter sued him. Musk, who months after the acquisition, said that the number of bot accounts on the platform has significantly been reduced, also said that the AI the bots use now is getting better at passing CAPTCHA tests meant to detect bots than humans.
However, some analysts believe that creating a paywall has the potential to hurt X’s growth. The company has been grappling to bring back advertisers and users who left due to the controversial changes introduced by Musk after his takeover. Introducing a paywall is expected to significantly cut the number of users on the platform.
Musk’s attempt to monetize the verification system under X Blue, has not been largely successful, as only a low percent of users have signed up for the Blue Subscription.
The mass exodus of advertisers has significantly impacted X’s revenue, jeopardizing Musk’s aim to recoup his spending and make the platform profitable. The company was operating at a loss around the period of his takeover. Twitter reported a $344 million loss in its last quarterly earnings report before the acquisition.
Earlier this month, Musk said X’s advertising revenue was down 60%. X Blue has also failed to bring in the expected revenue due to low subscription, even though it comes with added features such as more characters, the ability to edit posts after you posted them, and having your posts promoted over other non-Twitter Blue users.
Also, the company transformed the well-known TweetDeck service, which enables users to access multiple feeds displaying content such as users and lists, into XPro. In August, they introduced a fee for using this service.
A small monthly fee for users of X, formerly Twitter, could stop bots, according to Elon Musk. He said that introducing a subscription service would drastically slow the “vast armies of bots” as operators would need to individually pay for each account. X is currently free for most users, although it has a subscription service some pay for, as well as some brands. X now has 550 million “monthly users,” who generate 100 million to 200 million posts per day, said Musk, who made the comments during a livestream Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.