October 18th – Ever since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the platform has changed a lot. The famous blue bird logo disappeared, Twitter Blue was a thing for a minute, and most notably, the platform has rebranded to X. And now, X is has announced a new experiment…
The platform will now charge a one dollar per year fee in order to allow ‘new and unverified’ users to interact with posts. This test is currently ‘live’ in New Zealand and the Philippines. Existing users will not be affected.
In exchange for a dollar…
In exchange for a dollar, new users will be able to post content, like, reply, repost, bookmark and quote posts. A no-cost new user option will exist. These users will receive a read-only account, enabling them to look at posts and follow accounts – no interactions.
Why charge users?
The annual subscription is part of what the company is calling its “Not a Bot” initiative. The program is intended to help reduce spam. It’s not intended as a profit-driver.
Musk believes that charging users will stop bot armies.
X hasn’t yet explained why the new $1 subscription is only for new users joining via the web, and not the mobile app. It’s also unclear as to why Not a Bot is being beta tested in only two regions.
Expansion of the annual fee requirement for site interactions would represent a significant shift for the social media platform, which has remained free to use since its inception, in 2006.
More X news
In an interview, X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, stated that the company will be profitable in 2024. The executive sidestepped the question about X’s plans to charge users a fee for platform use.
At the moment, X offers an $8 per month paid plan. However, recent media investigations suggest that the company might introduce three premium tiers. One of them will be fully ad-free.
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