Billionaire Elon Musk on Monday, the 18th of September, announced his intention to introduce a small monthly fee for all users of his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), in a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reports Politico.
Elon Musk explained that the introduction of the fee on X is the only way “to fight the huge armies of bots” and to protect the platform against fake accounts that amplify hateful content. He believes that
a subscription fee would burden bots,
preventing them from creating multiple accounts.
Musk did not specify the exact monthly fee, but mentioned plans to introduce a “lower-tier pricing” option, which would be different from X’s current premium subscription, which starts at around nine euros per month.
In a conversation with the Israeli Prime Minister, Musk discussed the challenges posed by AI and the need to combat antisemitism and hate speech on its social media platform X. He revealed that X has around 550 million users who create between 100 and 200 million posts every day, admitting that some of these posts are “bad”.
When Musk acquired Twitter for 44 billion US dollars in October 2022, the platform underwent major changes, including a rebrand to X, a management restructuring, and the introduction of premium subscriptions.
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