Elon Musk has implied X, formerly called Twitter, may require all users to pay a fee to have access to the platform. Musk brought up the idea of charging all users during a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
“We’ve moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Mr. Netanyahu the Prime Minister of Israel.
According to the X majority shareholder, this is the only way to stamp out bots. The idea is not entirely new and Elon Musk was revisiting an idea apparently floated privately in the past.
Recently, X introduced voluntary ID verification for premium subscribers. However, the service is only available to premium subscribers in the USA. Now, it appears the platform would like to make verification mandatory.
It is clear there is financial interest for the company to charge users. Mr Musk insisted that getting people to pay for the service is purely aimed at tackling bots.
“This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defence against vast armies of bots,” he said
The main issue of contention is the varying subscription fees for X premium across the globe. Musk says that X is looking at introducing cheaper options that will suit all users.
“We’re actually going to come up with a lower tier pricing. So, we just want it to be just a small amount of money,” Elon Musk added.
X Struggling for Revenue
Since purchasing the social media platform last year, Musk has looked to incentivise users to pay for an enhanced service, which is now called X Premium. As a result, the platform has introduced a number of features to push users to move to premium.
This includes an Ad revenue-sharing program where X premium users get a monthly remittance. Despite the incentivises, X’s revenue has not yet recovered.
Part of this is due to major advertisers staying away from the platform.
