New users on X (Twitter) to pay fees

545

New X users might soon be charged a fee to enable posting on the social media platform, formerly referred to as Twitter.

Owner of the platform, Elon Musk gave a hint of the plan, while responding to a post by an X account talking on the changes the social media network had.

“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”, he wrote.

Giving more details, Musk said when implemented, new users “will be able to do write actions for free after 3 months”.

Reactions have trailed Musk’s responses with some netizens criticising the proposed plan.

Part of what makes X special is that anyone can just post without paying

We definitely need to stop the bots, but what about having the option to pay OR do something extremely computationally expensive (like mining some dogecoin or something) https://t.co/F1FGNsYU5S
— Whole Mars Catalog (Supervised) (@WholeMarsBlog) April 15, 2024

An investor in X, John Hanna @jjhanna2 replied, “I don’t think this will fix it. They will just continually create new accounts and know once they start writing in 3 months they may get shut down but they will have other accounts gaining write access and will just use this revolving door. There shouldn’t be write access without paying the fee”.

Another user, commended the move saying, “You should do it. If people really want to be on X, they would be willing to pay for three months”.