Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, had a conversation with Elon Musk and a few others about AI on Monday. The meeting was streamed live on X (formerly Twitter), and during the conversation, Elon Musk revealed that X is planning to charge a small fee to every user on the social media platform to reduce the number of bots. So, you may need to get ready to start paying a fee to use X or find its alternatives, such as BlueSky or Instagram's Threads.
According to Elon, if X charges even a tiny amount of money to every user on the social media platform, the total amount of money for an individual or an organization to operate a large number of bots (fake accounts) on X would be too high to sustain. Plus, X might make it mandatory for every user to pay the fee with a unique payment method. That means it would be practically impossible for individuals/organizations to make payments for every fake account on X with a different payment method.
Musk said, “Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny — call it a tenth of a penny — but even if (a bot maker) has to pay a few dollars, the effective cost of bots is very high.”
Musk says that this change is the only way to combat the vast armies of bots on X. Unfortunately, he didn't reveal the fee X plans to charge to every user for using the platform. He also didn't specify how the subscription to use X would differ from the current paid membership – X Premium – on the platform. Elon revealed that X has 550 million users, generating around 100 to 200 million posts daily. However, it isn't clear if he included spammers and their posts in those figures.
