Elon Musk has indicated that everyone will have to pay a fee to use X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — going forward.
Speaking at a roundtable about AI with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk said “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system.”As reported by Bloomberg‘s Dave Lee, Musk claims this is the only way to eliminate bots.
Musk didn’t provide any further details, but Lee says this fee would be less than what the platform charges for X Premium. Starting at $10/month in Canada, that subscription provides a blue checkmark, the ability to edit tweets posts, and more.
Of course, Musk is leaving out the fact that Twitter’s long-running financial woes have been exacerbated by swaths of advertisers leaving the platform amid a rise in hate speech. Altogether, Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped at least 50 percent since Musk bought the company. Apple CEO Tim Cook even called out the “abhorrent” anti-Semitism on the platform in a recent interview, although he admitted X is an “important property” and plans to continue advertising on it.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter also saddled him will billions in debt, so he’s taken a “throw everything at the wall” approach when it comes to generating revenue. In fact, Platformer even reported last year that Musk had already floated the idea of charging everyone for Twitter, although it was unclear at the time how serious he was being.
Naturally, it will be a big ask to start charging the hundreds of millions of monthly active X users for a service that has always been free. It remains to be seen how Musk will implement these ill-conceived plans.
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