Microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) might soon introduce a monthly fee for all its users in a bid to curtail the impact of bots, owner Elon Musk said during a conversation with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Bots are accounts run by computer programs/algorithms rather than humans and are prevalent on the platform, where they are used to artificially amplify messages that have a negative impact on its users.
During his conversation, Netanyahu raised the question of online anti-Semitism, and how X could “prevent the use of bots to replicate and amplify it”.
Musk replied saying the company was “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system”.
According to Musk, introducing a payment feature for all users is the “only way” to combat the vast armies of bots.
“Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny — call it a tenth of a penny — but if somebody even has to pay a few dollars, some minor amount, the effective cost of bots is very high. And then you also have to get a new payment method every time you have a new bot,” Musk said.
Time and again, Musk has spoken about the dwindling revenue of Twitter and in July also stated that the the platform had lost roughly half its advertising revenue.
The platform introduced paid subscription for its Twitter Blue feature, where users have to pay it costs $8/month for a monthly plan or $7/month for the annual plan. But, if a user signs up through the iOS or Android app, it will cost them $ 11/month.
In addition,
, Musk reinstated formerly banned accounts including that of former US president Donald Trump as well as cut down on content moderation. He also imposed temporary rate limits on tweets “to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.
The rate limit is a threshold that prevents you from accessing the platform once you have viewed a certain number of tweets (up to the set limit). Simply put, Twitter users who see the “read limit exceeded” message have reached the maximum number of posts they can view that day.
