X Going To Charge 'A Small Fee' For New User's Write Access: Elon Musk ConfirmsBillionnaire-entrepreneur Elon Musk has confirmed that his platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) will charge new users if they want to post anything. According to Mr Musk, the move is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots. He also added that the current Artificial Intelligence tools and the trolls farms can easily pass the user verification (whether human or bot) window of “are you a both” with ease.
“Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots. Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease,” Elon Musk wrote on an X post today.
He added that the onslaught of fake accounts also uses up the available namespace, so many good handles are taken as a result.
When a handle named Ian Miles Cheong commented that “So many good usernames are taken. I wish they’d be freed up,” Elon Musk reponded:
“We’ve freed up over a million so far. Will free up tens of millions in the coming weeks. However, as soon as we do this, the bot armies immediately snatch the namespace back again!”.
In April 2023, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and also the third richest person right now, completed his acquisition of Twitter for $44bn, marking the beginning of a new era for the social media platform, now rebranded as X.
Over the past year, Musk has introduced a series of significant changes to the platform, reshaping its identity and functionality in ways that have sparked both praise and criticism from users and observers alike.
One of the most notable changes was the introduction of X Premium and X Premium+, subscription services that offer additional features such as longer posts, larger reply prioritization, and access to generative AI chatbot Grok for users with a certain number of verified followers. This move was seen as an attempt to monetise the platform further and provide additional value to its users.
However, Musk’s tenure has also been marked by controversy and a notable decline in the platform’s user base. A lawsuit brought against X by a group claiming hate speech has risen on the app since Musk’s takeover was recently dismissed by a U.S. judge, highlighting ongoing concerns about the platform’s content moderation policies. The changes to the verification system have also been criticized for potentially allowing misinformation to spread more easily.