In an effort to fight bots, Musk says the corporate is transferring to having a small month-to-month fee for entry.
On-line platform X, previously referred to as Twitter, may introduce a month-to-month price for all customers, its proprietor Elon Musk has stated, citing the necessity to reduce down on bots.
The tech tycoon has made a number of modifications since taking on the location for $44bn in October final yr.
He has fired 1000’s of staff, launched a paid premium choice, reduce content material moderation and reinstated previously banned accounts, together with that of former United States President Donald Trump.
In July, he stated the platform had misplaced roughly half its promoting income.
Bots – accounts run by pc applications fairly than people – are frequent on X, the place they can be utilized to artificially amplify political messages or racial hatred.
Throughout a chat with Musk on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the query of on-line anti-Semitism and the way X may “stop the usage of bots – armies of bots – to copy and amplify it”.
Musk replied that the corporate was “transferring to having a small month-to-month fee to be used of the X system”.
“It’s the one means I can consider to fight huge armies of bots,” he stated. “As a result of a bot prices a fraction of a penny – name it a tenth of a penny – but when any individual even has to pay just a few {dollars}, some minor quantity, the efficient price of bots could be very excessive.
“And you then additionally should get a brand new fee methodology each time you’ve got a brand new bot.”
At present, X Premium prices $8 a month within the US however expenses rely on which nation the person is in.
