Billionaire, Tesla founder Elon Musk has said that social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter could soon be introducing a paywall for all users. "The single most important reason that we are moving to have a small monthly payment for the use of the X system is it is the only way I could think of to combat vast armies of bots," Musk said during a live stream on X with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. He also said that AI Bots were getting better at passing CAPTCHA tests.
Musk said that having a payment system and prioritizing posts of users posts would help minimize the influence of bots. "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, some minor amount, the effective cost of bots is very high," he said, Al Jazeera reported.
Last year, Musk had discussed the possibility with one of his advisers, venture capitalist David Sacks. He made several changes to the social media platform after he bought it in October 2022, including laying off 50 per cent of the staff.
He also made the blue tick, the indicator that accounts are verified to a paid feature. The company also made the TweetDeck service, a paid feature-- the TweetDeck allows users to view the number of feeds displaying things like users and lists. In July, Musk said the company was facing, a “50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load."
