Elon Musk says X may go behind a paywall for everyone so he can ‘combat vast armies of bots’
Kwan Wei Kevin Tan
Updated Tue, September 19, 2023 at 7:16 AM CDT·2 min read
not just in the United States, but in the world will be,
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Elon Musk.Theo Wargo/WireImage via Getty Images
- Elon Musk said X, formerly Twitter, might be rolling out a paywall to all its users.
- Musk said the move would be critical to help deal with bots on the platform.
- The billionaire didn’t give specifics but said X would charge “just a small amount of money.”
Elon Musk said X, his social-media platform previously known as Twitter, might be introducing a paywall for all users.
“The single most important reason that we are moving to having 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 livestream on X with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Monday.
Musk told Netanyahu that having a payment system and prioritizing premium 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,” Musk said.
Musk said he believed the paywall would be critical if X was to deal with bots on the platform.
“We are actually going to come up with a lower-tier pricing. We want it to be just a small amount of money,” Musk said. “It’s a longer discussion, but this is actually the only defense against armies of bots.”
This isn’t the first time the billionaire has considered having a paywall for all X users.
Musk had discussed the idea with one of his advisors, the venture capitalist David Sacks, last year, the tech newsletter Platformer reported.
Musk has introduced a flurry of changes to the platform since he bought it in October 2022.
Besides renaming Twitter to X, Musk replaced the platform’s legacy verification program — the blue ticks that verified the authenticity of famous personalities — with the Twitter Blue subscription program in April.
The changes are part of Musk’s attempts to put the platform on a path toward profitability. In July, the billionaire said in an X post that the company was in a difficult financial position.
“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk said in his July post. “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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