X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like, bookmark, and create lists, according to a source familiar with the matter. This change will go live today for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines.
Roughly 20 minutes after this story published, X’s Support account confirmed the details, writing that “this new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.”
Starting today, we’re testing a new program (Not A Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines. New, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected.
This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.
And so far, subscription options have proven to be the main solution that works at scale. — Support (@Support) October 17, 2023
The company published the “Not-a-Bot Terms and Conditions” today outlining its plan for a paid subscription service that gives users certain abilities on their platform, like posting content and interacting with other users. This program is different from X Premium, which offers more features like “Undo” and “Edit” for posts for $8 a month. Given the company’s tumultuous reputation under Musk, some users have voiced their hesitancy to turn over their credit card info.
X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. During a livestreamed conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
Shortly after the announcement, Musk tweeted that you can “read for free, but $1/year to write.”
“It’s the only way to fight bots without blocking real users,” Musk wrote. “This won’t stop bots completely, but it will be 1000X harder to manipulate the platform.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino was asked last month onstage at Vox’s Code Conference about how going to a full subscription model on X will affect revenue, something that is now going live to users today. Yaccarino answered at the time, “Did he say that or did he say he’s thinking about it?”
The very fact that you’re requesting payment info already makes plenty people think twice. Specially in the light of the brand changing from Twitter to X - if you’re clueless about the change something “smells off”.
On the other hand for a lot of bot owners this is absolutely no issue. You shouldn’t be popping up a whole bot army, but instead only a handful of well coordinated bots to astroturf the shit out of the platform.
In other words the idea might have the opposite effect - keeping potential new human users out, but allowing the bots in.
In other words the idea might have the opposite effect - keeping potential new human users out, but allowing the bots in
The galaxy brain shit here is that I suspect the bot problem actually doesn’t concern Musk in the way he claims. If he can make it seem like there are fewer bots (because of these policies) while at the same time not actually getting rid of them, the engagement level stays up and the advertisers are happy in their ignorance. Bots are better users: they’re not fickle, they don’t go to sleep, they can be reliably expected to be posting more regularly than normal users. The trick for Musk is convincing everyone they’re gone.
I can only approve of people paying for services they use. It isn’t free to run. But there are several things to consider:
- $1/year is very low, transaction fees for accepting that amount of money are high
- It’s a low price for successful bots
- Doesn’t remove ads (take money from subscribers or advertisers, not both, also print media)
- Doesn’t give you better control over your experience. The paying customer should be the one being listened to
- This is Elon Musk’s twitter we’re talking about, how long until he changes his mind again?
Another surge on mastodon? Countries, cities, public organisations should put up their own mastodon like EU, BBC and Germany have.
I was more thinking it’s to test the waters.
A buck is affordable to most everyone who has the means to access Twitter.
Of course next year it’ll be Twitter++ subscriptions for 20 bucks a month, as they phase out the 1 dollar tier.
I never cared for Twitter, and watching Musk’s spin on it has been hilarious as someone with a long history in corporate IT.
Pre-edit: At the moment I’m refusing to refer to it by a tween edgelords name~ Musk’s name for it.
Dutch government put up an instance as well; e.g. this is the handle of the agency for road and waterworks. @rijkswaterstaat@social.overheid.nl
Doesn’t remove ads (take money from subscribers or advertisers, not both, also print media)
Tell that to all the advertorial content from e.g., the fossil fuel industry on The New York Times. Print news has been accepting money from advertisers while charging users since before internet ads were a thing. They just hide the ads in more insidious, corrupt ways.
I can only approve of people paying for services they use. It isn’t free to run. But there are several things to consider:
I don’t mind paying for services, but I now have 20 different services. Each one is trying to extract the maximum amount of money out of me while giving me a minimum in return.
I also accept that those services are not free to run, but realistically, these companies aren’t just trying to cover their operating costs, they’re trying to further line the pockets of executives and shareholders.
And its never enough for them. I could give Twitter $100 a month and they’d still sell my data for a few extra pennies. I could give YouTube an unlimited supply of servers and bandwidth and they’d still show just as many ads.
We will never get the cost living under control until this corporate greed is addressed because no matter how much money we pay people, there’s an army of psychopaths ready to milk them of every cent.
So fuck em. They can have an extra dollar when they can prove it will actually end up in the pocket of an employee. Otherwise, the richest man in the world can fund his own little reactionary pet project.
I would also welcome decent micropayments (maybe digieuro?), so that you wouldn’t need to subscribe, but could pay 0.045€ for something without it being unfeasible because of fixed transaction costs.
That’s incompatible with corporate greed. They will look at a billion transactions for $0.05 and start thinking “What if each of those was $0.50? Or $5.00? Or $50.00?”.
Without a regulating force (such as laws or consumer power that isn’t just neoliberal lies) , it will always grow to absorb every available dollar it can.
And realistically, charging people 0.045€ for the service they actually use won’t make them nearly as rich as charging people $50 each month for the $3 dollars they use.
They’ve already done the maths to prove it. It’s why it’s never happened.
I mean I get what they’re trying to do, but I feel like the people successfully making money with spam/bots will not really have a problem with that fee.
That’s because reducing the bot problem isn’t actually what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to patch the gaping hole in revenue that advertisers left in their exodus
Bots aren’t a “problem” for Twitter unless the advertisers think there are more of them than there are real users. But if you can convince advertisers that you’re reducing bots, while also not actually reducing bots, you’ve got a winning formula. Bots are reliable posters, they contribute a lot more than a regular user, and they make high-engagement tweets/posts/tweex that end up getting a lot of views, aka advertising opportunities.
Sure, but bots aren’t why advertisers pulled out of Twitter, and replacing the revenue that advertisers used to provide is the main motivator behind this change. Any other justification or claim by Musk is just his typical PR bullshit that people still seem to lap up like it’s the word of god
At it’s peak twitter had 500million users. in 2022 twitter made 4.5bil in profit. Typically a 1% signup rate for a new paid service is considered really good and there is no way that there are still 500million users. Seems like it’s just a drop in the bucket.
Personally I think it’s yet another attempt to intentionally dismantle the company.
Twitter made 4.5 billion in revenue, not profit. They likely weren’t making profit yet, but either way we’re still not privy to the company’s exact profit before or after Musk’s takeover, and therefore aren’t privy to how much this charge would affect their margins.
Personally I think it’s yet another attempt to intentionally dismantle the company.
If Musk wanted to dismantle Twitter he’d just shut it down. He owns the thing, he doesn’t need a secret plan to fuck it up he can just do it. He’s just flailing around trying to patch the holes in his $44 billion fuck up and leaning into his alt-right image of it
there is no way that there are still 500million users.
It’s surprisingly hard to get a count of users. They’re not a public company any more, so don’t have to product quarterly earnings reports any more (which usually show the number of users). Just from the first page of Google results for “Twitter number of users”, some sites say they have 237 million users, some say 372 million, some say 528 million (way too high), some say 396 million.
Whatever the case, they’re the smallest major social media site. Even Pinterest is larger :)
The CEO learning this at the same time as we are
So an army of a thousand twitter bots will cost a thousand dollars a year? That seems shruggable.
