Elon Musk casually announced plans to start charging a monthly fee to everyone who uses X, his new name for Twitter.
The world’s richest man revealed the plan Monday evening during a live chat with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which he was asked how he plans to deal with the large armies of robots that amplify hate speech.
“The most important reason we’re considering imposing a small monthly payment for using System .
He explained that adding a subscription to access the social networking site would make it difficult for the bots to create accounts because they would each have to register a new credit card.
Musk did not specify how much money he would charge each user, but said it would be a “lower rate” than what X charges its premium subscribers, which is about $8 per month.
“We want it to be just a small amount of money,” he said.
“It’s a longer discussion, but in my opinion it’s the only defense against vast armies of robots, because as AI gets very, very good, it’s actually capable of pulling off these kinds of CAPTCHA tests better than humans.”
Musk previously floated the idea of requiring users to pay a monthly subscription fee last year amid widespread layoffs at the company, according to a report in technology newsletter Platformer.
It reported that the Tesla CEO discussed the idea with venture capitalist David Sacks in November, but that the idea was rejected in favor of an initial large-scale verification proposal.
But the company continues to lose money, with Musk announcing earlier this month that Twitter’s ad revenue was down 60%.
He blamed the loss of revenue on the Anti-Defamation League after the nonprofit organization reported an increase in hate speech about X following the reinstatement of banned accounts there.
Musk tweeted that the ADL was “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it and myself of being anti-Semitic.”
Faced with negative reactions to this tweet, Musk announced that he would meet with Netanyahu.
“He’s basically saying, ‘If I had to pay too much for Twitter, you would too,'” journalist Kara Swisher tweeted upon hearing the news.
The announcement that
“The reason social media is popular is because it’s free and your friends participate,” he said. “Not everyone can afford to pay.”
Historian Alex von Tunzelmann added: “Even if you agreed to pay a fee, I really don’t think it would be a good idea to trust this company with your credit card or bank details. »
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