Tech

Elon Musk Says Twitter Now X, Is Going To Charge Subscribers

Published

7 months ago

September 19, 2023

Elon Musk Says Twitter Now X, Is Going To Charge Subscribers

(CTN News) – In an interview with TechCrunch, Elon Musk has indicated that X, formerly known as Twitter, is in the process of charging all its users for access to the platform.

It has become Musk’s bugbear of late that automated accounts, or bots, have taken over the business, and he has said that he plans to erect a paywall around the business to protect it from them.

During a Twitter meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Tesla’s CEO, the world’s richest man, suggested that X would start charging its users.

Currently, Twitter charges users only for its subscription service X Premium, which offers perks such as a verified account checkmark. It costs $11 per month in the US for iPhones and £11 in the UK.

As Musk explained, we will be moving to monthly payments for the use of the system in the near future.

As Musk explained, bots cost “a fraction of a penny” to set up, and he added that it would be difficult for software owners to use the software if the cost of an account were raised to “a few dollars or something”.

Moreover, each time a bot creator wanted to create a new bot, they would need to come up with another new payment method every time they wanted to create another one.”

In addition to this, Musk also claimed that Twitter X had 550 million monthly users generating up to 200 million posts per day. Before Musk purchased the business in October 2022, the platform measured its users by a different method, monetisable daily active users, which stood at 238 million users when Musk bought the business.

Musk has hinted that there could be an eventual paywall on the platform to address an entrenched decline in advertising, which is its main source of income.

Apparently, Twitter Musk has stated that a boycott of advertisers, sparked by concerns over his management of the platform and the way it manages inappropriate or hateful content, has caused a 60% decline in the platform’s ad revenue.

While Musk said his conversation with Netanyahu was intended to be about technology and artificial intelligence, the discussion quickly turned to free speech and anti-Semitism amid allegations that X wasn’t doing enough to address racist speech on the platform.

According to Netanyahu, he hopes that Musk will find ways within the confines of the first amendment to clamp down on anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred on Twitter X, within the limits of the protections of that amendment.

Netanyahu said, “I am encouraging and urging you to find the balance you are looking for.”. This is a very difficult task.

In his account on X, Musk has said that he is in favor of freedom of speech, but he is against antisemitism of any kind, no matter how it is expressed.