Elon Musk to charge ‘small’ monthly payment from X users to combat bots, falling revenue

livemint.com:

Elon Musk indicated that he might transition X (formerly Twitter) into a fully subscription-based social network during a conversation focused on artificial intelligence with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 18. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system," Bloomberg quoted Musk telling Israeli PM Netanyahu while stating that it was the only way to eliminate the problem of bots. Musk said making someone pay a few dollars to use the service made “the effective cost of bots" very high and would require bot operators to use a new payment method every time they wanted to create a new one.

He said a bot costs a fraction of a penny to operate under X’s current system, which offers both free and paid tiers. Hence it’s the “single most important reason" he said to shift to a monthly payment system, reported Bloomberg. Musk suggested implementing a small monthly fee for X/Twitter users as the only effective way to combat the problem of bots.

While Musk didn't specify the timing or the exact cost of this subscription, he mentioned that X currently boasts 550 million monthly active users who generate between 100 million and 200 million daily posts. According to industry news site Platformer, Musk previously mulled the idea of putting Twitter entirely behind a paywall in internal conversations. The billionaire, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, pointed out that X's ad sales have declined by approximately 50% since he acquired the company, leading to negative cash flow due to the drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.