archive.org

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like, bookmark, and create lists, according to a source familiar with the matter. This change will go live today for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines.

Roughly 20 minutes after this story published, X’s Support account confirmed the details, writing that “this new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.”

Starting today, we’re testing a new program (Not A Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines. New, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected.

This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.

And so far, subscription options have proven to be the main solution that works at scale. — Support (@Support) October 17, 2023

The company published the “Not-a-Bot Terms and Conditions” today outlining its plan for a paid subscription service that gives users certain abilities on their platform, like posting content and interacting with other users. This program is different from X Premium, which offers more features like “Undo” and “Edit” for posts for $8 a month. Given the company’s tumultuous reputation under Musk, some users have voiced their hesitancy to turn over their credit card info.

X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. During a livestreamed conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”

Shortly after the announcement, Musk tweeted that you can “read for free, but $1/year to write.”

“It’s the only way to fight bots without blocking real users,” Musk wrote. “This won’t stop bots completely, but it will be 1000X harder to manipulate the platform.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino was asked last month onstage at Vox’s Code Conference about how going to a full subscription model on X will affect revenue, something that is now going live to users today. Yaccarino answered at the time, “Did he say that or did he say he’s thinking about it?”

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    73
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    This requires people to have a credit card in order to be able to tweet. A huge chunk of the world population does not have access to a credit card, or even banking.

    So this will really do a lot of harm, to Twitter as the Town square, to Twitter helping oppressed people.

    For example the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has 75% of the people without access to a credit card, as a random country to take as an example.

    • Uglyhead
      link
      English
      261 year ago

      This requires people to have a credit card

      Muskrat Phony Stark will start taking his own brand of X crypto shitcoin for payment as well. All the way back before he bought twitter he had been discussing this with all of his dipshit friends in text messages (all leaked and available to look up).

      • @eatthecake
        link
        121 year ago

        He wants everyone on his everything app. This is about getting people to add a payment method and funnelling those payments through his app as well as getting as much info as possible on users. He wants to be big brother.

    • Eggyhead
      link
      English
      121 year ago

      Unless of course he doesn’t want people without credit cards on the platform anymore. I doubt they matter much to him, and perhaps he wants X to exist for the privileged only.

    • @km3k
      link
      English
      9
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      This will really do a lot of harm, to Twitter as the Town square, to Twitter helping oppressed people.

      Twitter hasn’t been effective at either or those things for years. This will make it worse, but at this point it’s not that much worse than it already is.

    • @infinitepcg
      link
      61 year ago

      A debit card should be sufficient and it seems that 72% of the people in Saudi Arabia have a debit card, probably even more among those who would use social media.

  • @TropicalDingdong
    link
    401 year ago

    Just fucking call it twitter team.

    Its still twitter.

    X is dumb af and its not what the thing is.

    • @scottywh
      link
      21 year ago

      It’s kind of funny though because Twitter was a shitty name from the beginning… It’s just that X isn’t better and it was already well known and established as Twitter.

      • @TropicalDingdong
        link
        51 year ago

        It’s kind of funny though because Twitter was a shitty name from the beginning… It’s just that X isn’t better and it was already well known and established as Twitter.

        Bro the name got so big it got verbed and put in a dictionary.

        • @scottywh
          link
          21 year ago

          Doesn’t change anything I said though.

          It was a shitty stupid name.

          “Twits” are stupid people and have been since long before the site’s creation.

          And it sounds an awful lot like twat.

          It’s amazing that it was ever as successful as it was with such a shitty name really.

          • @TropicalDingdong
            link
            21 year ago

            And it sounds an awful lot like twat.

            I still generally think this of most people on twitter.

            • @scottywh
              link
              11 year ago

              I used to jokingly refer to it as Twitter Twatter even…

              Tweeter would have made more sense to me (but still been damn stupid and subject to the Twatter jokes).

  • @hperrin
    link
    32
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I charge $1/month to send email on my email service. There’s a reason for that. It’s because it’s the smallest amount I can charge, and spammers are unlikely to pay anything, no matter how small, to send email. If they do, and I catch them, I’d probably be able to get their payment account suspended. So, I understand why this could be a good approach to combatting spam. Here’s the problem with Twitter doing it:

    • Elon has full control over the platform. It’s not like there are other providers that will block him if his users send a bunch of spam. He also has the ability to revoke all the messages that users have sent once they are discovered as spammers, whereas with email, once spam is sent, there’s nothing I can do about it.
    • Email is actually useful. Tweeting is just self promotion. No one coordinates their doctor appointment with Twitter.
    • Spam is basically the only thing keeping Twitter looking viable right now. Their users are leaving. Their advertisers are leaving. It’s maybe not the best time to be pushing the spammers away.
    • Elon’s whole mission or whatever is supposed to be “freeze peach”, but this goes against that. The “digital town square” where “everyone has a voice” can’t have a price tag.
  • be_excellent_to_each_other
    link
    fedilink
    221 year ago

    Is there anyone who still doesn’t believe he’s running it into the ground intentionally? Anyone at all? I’d like to understand your logic if so.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      9
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It feels like a toss up between that and Elon huffing his own farts to the point of brain damage

      • Amju Wolf
        link
        fedilink
        21 year ago

        To be fair you can use it like phone numbers to correlate accounts and just ban anyone who has the same cc on multiple accounts with bans.

        • katy ✨
          link
          fedilink
          51 year ago

          i mean bots don’t use the same cc they use stolen ones

          • Amju Wolf
            link
            fedilink
            1
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Right but it’s still probably pretty hard to get a few thousand stolen credit cards. Significantly harder than just getting the money.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      5
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      He’s charging $1 a month to prevent bots on a site where bots have $8 blue checkmarks from stolen credit cards. He’s gonna get visa and MasterCard knocking if he starts being associated with Jagex style ccard fraud.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        100% The man just loves “big” ideas that sound good on paper to investors, but don’t actually add anything. Idk what the answer to bots is, but this ain’t it, chief.

  • @carl_dungeon
    link
    English
    191 year ago

    Way too low, should be more like $500 a year.

    • ramOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      9
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      For likes, maybe. Retweets? That’s gotta be at least $100/month. That’s not outside the standard for being able to reuse posts from websites like shutterstock, and other sharable media websites.

  • livus
    link
    fedilink
    17
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Sinking lid policy, I love it. Honestly it’s like he’s trying to kill TwitX.

    This change will go live today for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines.

    Omg I’m dying, why NZ and the Philippines?!

    NZ literally just had a general election so it’s going to mess up a lot of whatever change in astroturfing was about to happen, is all I can think of.

    • ramOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      181 year ago

      NZ and Philippines are often early test markets for western markets and asia respectively. I’m thinking it’s likely that one of the marketing guys convinced Elon to slow his roll and that’s why it’s only rolling out to a small userbase, rather than being implemented for every user at once like his bad ideas always are.

      • livus
        link
        fedilink
        71 year ago

        Makes sense. I knew that about NZ and tech like cellphones, didn’t realise Philippines was the Asian test market though.

  • jimmydoreisalefty
    link
    fedilink
    English
    7
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    edit: added questions and thoughts


    Archive link not working on my end.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Ffortune.com%2F2023%2F10%2F17%2Ftwitter-x-charging-new-users-1-dollar-year-to-tweet%2F


    Do you think the bot issue is the real reason?

    Many other social media has bots, what is different from all other places?

    The elite do use Twitter for politics and news, though. Media people will stay so as to not be out of the loop and others will just be lurkers…

    It seems to be a pay wall, for sharing opinions, so I think people will gravitate to supporting certain people that share their views. Hard to tell what will happen though…

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    71 year ago

    And here I was thinking there were no new reasons to never create a Twitter account, 'ol Elon gives me one more.

  • Amju Wolf
    link
    fedilink
    71 year ago

    The general stupidity of this aside that’s something I’d actually be willing to pay for any and every online service I use even semi-regularly. Provided it would also help fight against tracking and hide ads.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    61 year ago

    Now just add reading tweXts to the $1 a year plan, the money isn’t enough to discourage someone but the hassle of setting up the payment is.

    • Uglyhead
      link
      English
      91 year ago

      tweXts

      Xcretions

  • AutoTL;DRB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    41 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like, bookmark, and create list, according to a source familiar with the matter

    X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform.

    During a recent livestreamed conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”

    The company also published “Not-a-Bot Terms and Conditions” today outlining its plan for a paid subscription service that gives users certain abilities on their platform, like posting content and interacting with other users.

    This story is developing.

    Please check back later for updates.


    The original article contains 126 words, the summary contains 126 words. Saved 0%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!