Anyone currently using the free Tier X, formerly known as Twitter, may be asked to pay a “small” monthly fee to access the service, X owner Elon Musk said on Monday. The billionaire entrepreneur made this statement during a live chat with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Musk called the social media site’s “vast armies of bots” an “extremely difficult problem” and said the platform would “move to a small monthly fee for using System X” as a result.

“It’s the only way I can think of to deal with giant armies of robots,” Musk said. “Because a boat costs a lot less than a penny – call it a tenth of a penny – but [творцю бота] will have to pay a few dollars…the actual cost of the boots is very high.” He added that every bot must register a new payment method and will impose additional restrictions on those who automatically set up accounts.

More malicious bots could flood people’s inboxes and replies with annoying spam, spread hateful material or attempt to influence elections, ultimately ruining the user experience. Musk declined to share details about how much a subscription might cost or whether any benefits or features would be offered in exchange for payment.

X currently only has one subscription named Prize. The paid tier is improved from Twitter Blue and offers a number of features such as an edit button, prioritization in conversations and search, longer posts, text formatting, and fewer ads.

Premium currently costs up to $115 per year, but the new fees for non-premium users are expected to be significantly lower. As with many ideas Musk has touted, there’s no telling when non-Premium X users might be asked to pay a monthly fee.

During the livestream, Musk also said that X currently has 550 million “monthly users” but did not say how many of those might be bots rather than humans. In fact, if the future fee proves effective in eliminating bots and preventing new ones from being installed, X’s user base is likely to decrease at least in the short term, which could impact how much it can charge advertisers. The user base will be further impacted by those who refuse to pay to use X and walk away. Source