Musk wants to turn X (Twitter), into a paid platform to combat bots

Elon Musk plans to make X, formerly known as Twitter, a paid platform for all its users.

He announced plans to introduce small monthly subscriptions in a live chat with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister.

Musk didn’t specify the cost of the plans or the features that would be included in the lowest tier.

He did say that X has 550,000,000 monthly users who typically post between 100 million and 200 million posts a week. However, it is not known how many of these users are bots.

This is a 140% rise from the “average daily active usage” reported by Twitter, in May 2022 before Musk took over.

Why we care. Advertisers may benefit from the transition of X to a premium platform, as they will have a higher-quality audience with fewer bots. This could result in more conversions and higher ROI. There’s a downside, however: Some users may ditch X in favor of free alternatives such as Threads. This could reduce the user base for X and, therefore, the reach of X’s advertisers.

What did X say? Musk told Prime Minister, Netanyahu:

• The only way that I can imagine to fight vast armies, of bots, is to have a monthly fee for the use of the X System.
• “Because bots cost a fraction or a 10th of a cent, but if someone has to pay even a few dollars, or some other minor amount, then the effective cost is very high. And you also have get a different payment method each time you buy a new one.”
• We’re going to lower the price. “We want to charge a very small amount [and] this is my opinion, the only way to defend against huge armies of robots.”

Deep dive. The X blog has more information on the latest platform updates.

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