Elon Musk Plans to Charge New Users on X! Why?
In October 2022, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, acquired Twitter and renamed it X the following year, with the ambitious goal of turning X into an “Everything APP” that combines payment, video, and other functions in one platform.
Since taking over as CEO, Musk has been making bold reforms, not only changing X’s sources of income and verification processes but also facing the challenge of rampant “bots” on the platform.
Recently, X Daily News, a platform dedicated to releasing updates and news about X, revealed that Musk is planning policy changes and intends to charge new users before they can reply, like, or bookmark content.
This news was confirmed by Musk himself, who stated that charging a small fee to new users is the only way to curb robot attacks at this stage, as current artificial intelligence and troll accounts can easily bypass X’s robot verification mechanism.
In fact, X has a history of charging fees. In October 2023, X implemented fees for new users in countries like New Zealand and the Philippines who had not yet undergone identity verification. These fees limited new users to reading tweets, but if they wanted to further interact or post, they had to pay.
Musk argues that charging a small fee to new users is the only way to curb robot attacks at the moment.
Mixed Reactions from the Community
Regarding Musk’s plan to adjust fees, most internet users expressed doubts. Many believe that X will lose its freedom of speech by implementing fees, and it is considered unfriendly to new user growth. Some suggested that if X were to charge fees, it should be around $1 per year, a reasonable amount that everyone can easily afford.
However, blockchain investigator ZachXBT questions whether charging fees can truly solve the problem of robots on X. The reason is that many scam accounts have spent money to obtain verification badges, and the scam groups behind them apparently don’t mind the cost of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.
Some users propose increasing the difficulty of creating scam accounts by introducing measures such as payment verification or engaging in activities with higher computational costs, like participating in Dogecoin mining.
In response, Musk stated that implementing such new features would be much more challenging than charging a small fee and clarified that if the policy changes, the fees would only apply to new users and after three months, new users would automatically revert to the free mode.
X’s battle against robots has been ongoing for quite some time. Earlier this month (April 2024), the platform conducted a large-scale cleanup targeting robots and fake accounts. However, many people complained that their genuine accounts were also banned, indicating that X still has a long way to go in terms of accuracy and efficiency in preventing robot attacks.
This article is authorized for reproduction by Cryptocity.
Proofread and edited by Gao Jingyuan.