Pay for everything

First of all, let us remind you that X has been tested in New Zealand and the Philippines for a while. Each new user must pay a small annual fee to be able to post. But the new idea goes further.

App and services researchers noticed changes in the list of updates the company released on April 15. There is special mention of the new policy where new users will now be charged Small annual fee for basic actions like liking, adding to favorites, and replying to messages.

This may seem quite logical, because many bots choose methods of spamming in comments and throwing pseudo-news with analytics decorated with loud headlines. But it’s not clear how paid bookmarks can repel bots.

Commenting on this news, Elon Musk said that collecting money from new users is “the only way to stop the relentless attack of bots.” But at the same time he writes not about likes, comments and bookmarks, but about the very fact of writing tweets.

Unfortunately, a small write access fee for new users is the only way to stop the relentless onslaught of bots. Current AIs (and troll farms) can easily bypass “are you a bot” checks
Musk writes.

Will this approach be effective? Only global statistics will be shown, which we will get soon. But with the enormous amounts of money Russia and China have invested in their propaganda, including purchasing blue fact-checks to promote in publications, it would be easy for them to pay a few extra bucks to continue spreading their made-up “news” and controversial comments.

What can be said for sure is that the implementation of this policy will increase X’s revenues, which are gradually depleting due to the constant influx of users and the unstable situation with advertisers. According to Bloomberg, X generates $2.5 billion in revenue in 2023That works out to roughly $600 million in quarterly ad revenue, compared to $1 billion which was the norm before Musk took over.

But the same move could scare away new real users who would want to start using the service but won’t because they don’t want to pay. So one day only old accounts and bots may remain on X.