Key takeaways:
- Elon Musk announced that X (formerly known as Twitter) could soon be implementing a paywall for its users.
- The paywall would require users to make a “small monthly payment” of a few dollars in order to continue using the service.
- The news of the paywall has been met with mixed reactions from users, and it remains to be seen if and when the paywall will be implemented.
Elon Musk, the founder of X, formerly known as Twitter, announced Monday that the social media giant could soon be implementing a paywall for its users. During a livestream, Musk revealed that the company now has 550 million monthly users, who generate between 100 million and 200 million posts per day.
The paywall would require users to make a “small monthly payment” of a few dollars in order to continue using the service. Musk believes this is the only way to combat the “vast armies of bots” that can be used to amplify hateful speech. He did not disclose how much the new plan would cost users, or what other features would or would not be included with payment at the lowest tier.
Musk also did not make an apples-to-apples comparison between the number of authentic users and bots, but said that instituting the proposal would make “the effective cost of bots very high.”
The news of the paywall has been met with mixed reactions from users. Some are in favor of the proposal, believing it will help to reduce the amount of bots and hateful speech on the platform. Others are concerned that the paywall will limit access to the platform for those who cannot afford to pay.
It remains to be seen if and when the paywall will be implemented, and what the exact details of the plan will be. For now, users can continue to use the platform for free, but may soon be required to pay a small fee in order to do so.
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