X/Twitter starts charging new users $1 per year

midian182

midian182

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What just happened? Elon Musk's desire to charge every X, formerly Twitter, user a subscription fee has taken its first step toward reality. The platform is now rolling out a $1 annual fee to new users in New Zealand and the Philippines in a model called "not a bot."

Following last month's news that Musk had suggested charging X users a small fee to combat the service's bot problem, Fortune was first to report that the company will begin charging those in New Zealand and the Philippines $1 per year for the ability to tweet, reply, quote, and bookmark posts on the web version of X. The fee will only apply to new users – existing accounts will not be affected – who must also confirm their phone numbers. It's unclear if these changes will eventually apply to the app as well.

Any new users who don't want to pay the fee will be limited to "read-only" actions, such as being able to read posts, watch videos, and follow others.

"As of October 17th, 2023 we've started testing 'Not A Bot', a new subscription method for new users in two countries," X said in a post, following news of the rollout. "This new test was developed to bolster our already significant efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity."

"This will evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us combat bots and spammers on X while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. Within this test, existing users are not affected."

Musk talked about his wish to charge X users what he called a "small monthly payment" during a livestreamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September. He said that bot creators being forced to pay a fee every time they made another bot would act as a deterrent.

"Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny – call it a tenth of a penny – but even if it has to pay […] a few dollars or something, the effective cost of bots is very high," Musk explained at the time.

As a valid counterpoint, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress fame was quick to react with a few thoughts that can be summarized in that while "proof of work" (paying for access) can be a temporary deterrent to bots, spammers, and paid trolls, historical web trends suggest that even a small paywall won't necessarily prevent misuse, as malicious actors are already spending thousands if not millions of dollars, reaping benefits worth the expense for their fraudulent means, whether this is instant financial gain or simply creating the illusion of a certain narrative.

There there's no word on when or if the fee will expand to other countries, but a wider rollout seems like a safe bet.

X's current paid-for subscription, X Premium, offers extra benefits such as a blue checkmark (which can be hidden) and the ability to edit posts. It starts at $8 per month / $84 per year (web version) or $11 per month / $115 per year for Android and iOS. Subscribers also see half the number of ads, get prioritized rankings in search, can write longer posts, and more. But it's estimated that under one million users subscribe to X Premium.

While X and Musk insist the new charge is to address the bot problem and not solely an extra source of income, the number of advertisers that have left the service since the billionaire took over has caused ad revenue to decline by 60%.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100531-xtwitter-starts-charging-new-users-1-year.html

 
As a valid counterpoint, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress fame was quick to react with a few thoughts that can be summarized in that while "proof of work" (paying for access) can be a temporary deterrent to bots, spammers, and paid trolls, historical web trends suggest that even a small paywall won't necessarily prevent misuse, as malicious actors are already spending thousands if not millions of dollars, reaping benefits worth the expense for their fraudulent means, whether this is instant financial gain or simply creating the illusion of a certain narrative.
 
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Julio Franco said:
As a valid counterpoint, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress fame was quick to react with a few thoughts that can be summarized in that while "proof of work" (paying for access) can be a temporary deterrent to bots, spammers, and paid trolls, historical web trends suggest that even a small paywall won't necessarily prevent misuse, as malicious actors are already spending thousands if not millions of dollars, reaping benefits worth the expense for their fraudulent means, whether this is instant financial gain or simply creating the illusion of a certain narrative.
Click to expand...

That is why it is only 1 dollar ... so he can keep the bots (and up his ''paying'' subscriber count) and offset a little bit of debt..
 
Hmmm.... first thought was that they would have to tie an account to a unique CC or something for this to even be worth it (blacklisting the CC when banned for spam).

I just don't know how easy it is to get a new CC number for spammers.
 
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As someone from a programming background, I’ll mention that any added expense on a per account level will scale up quickly. Computing is dirt cheap when simply processing text, and when creating a bot you already have to limit how much activity individual accounts have to maintain a humanlike appearance. I would be surprised if it cost anything more than $100 a month to operate 10,000 bots. So when annual operating costs go from $1,200 a year to over $10,000 a year, then financials will definitely limit how much you can scale up a bot network. If the computing tasked involved image, video, or other binary data, the same could not be said. In other words, yes this will only limit the number of bots, but it’s still likely to reduce them by 10x.
 
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m4a4 said:
Hmmm.... first thought was that they would have to tie an account to a unique CC or something for this to even be worth it (blacklisting the CC when banned for spam).

I just don't know how easy it is to get a new CC number for spammers.
Click to expand...
That’s a reasonable assumption and probably a lever that they can pull if necessary. The hard part will be if bot operators use Android to pay the $1 to validate or something; I bet Google doesn’t share credit card numbers with app makers.
 
Phew... Lucky I already have a twitter account then, because now that dollar will go towards a $5400 electric unicycle, an $8000 to $10,000 PC, and a $5 bread & butter pudding. Ha! Beat you Mister Musk you money grabbing ravenous gollum... thing...
 
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Julio Franco said:
As a valid counterpoint, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress fame was quick to react with a few thoughts that can be summarized in that while "proof of work" (paying for access) can be a temporary deterrent to bots, spammers, and paid trolls, historical web trends suggest that even a small paywall won't necessarily prevent misuse, as malicious actors are already spending thousands if not millions of dollars, reaping benefits worth the expense for their fraudulent means, whether this is instant financial gain or simply creating the illusion of a certain narrative.
Click to expand...
But, but, but Musk is a genius. His billions say so! 🤣
 
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I wonder which social media site the rest of the media will fall in love with next. Everyone always quoted X, (obligatory) formerly Twitter. There was good quality stuff, but the lack of quoting the other social media platforms always felt like an oversight. It happened, but rarely.
 
Julio Franco said:
As a valid counterpoint, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress fame was quick to react with a few thoughts that can be summarized in that while "proof of work" (paying for access) can be a temporary deterrent to bots, spammers, and paid trolls, historical web trends suggest that even a small paywall won't necessarily prevent misuse, as malicious actors are already spending thousands if not millions of dollars, reaping benefits worth the expense for their fraudulent means, whether this is instant financial gain or simply creating the illusion of a certain narrative.
Click to expand...
As a somewhat layman on the issue, this makes me wonder if the paywall may merely deter the smaller/less funded bot-nets while allowing the larger/well funded(state backed?) bot-nets to thrive. All bots are bad, but will it really be much better if the only bots spreading propaganda are the ones with the most money, power, and tyrannical intentions? Kinda like how big corporations lobby the government to enact policy that only the big fish can afford to comply with, effectively eliminating the competition of small business. Am I making any sense, or am I just paranoid?
 
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I am interested regarding why those two countries in tech details.
Do laws allow for exploiting platforms with bots without getting punished or something?
 
I can't believe they charge $11 for phone and $8 for web. I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous but that sure doesn't help.
 
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