Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), wants new users to pay to post (tweet). He says this will curb the platform’s bot problem.
In reply to an X account that posted about changes on X’s website, the 52-year-old billionaire said charging a small fee to new accounts was the way forward. He posted: “Current AI (and troll farms) can pass ‘are you a bot’ with ease.” He is referring to tools like CAPTCHA.
The company recently experimented with charging a $1 annual subscription fee for new users in the Philippines and New Zealand to be able to post and interact with other users on X. New free users signing up for the platform from these regions could read posts but couldn’t interact with them.
Earlier this month, X said that the platform will begin purging spam accounts, warning users that their follower count could be affected. X has been unable to limit bots, despite Musk’s declaration that “we will defeat the spam bots or die trying” before he acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022.