X proprietor Elon Musk at present floated the concept that the social community previously generally known as Twitter could now not be a free web site. In a live-streamed dialog with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Musk stated the corporate was “shifting to a small month-to-month fee for the usage of the X system. He recommended that such a change can be essential to cope with the issue of bots on the platform.
“It’s the solely means I can suppose of to fight huge armies of bots,” defined Musk. “As a result of a bot prices a fraction of a penny — name it a tenth of a penny — but even if it has to pay…a few {dollars} or one thing, the efficient price of bots is very excessive,” he stated. Plus, each time a bot creator wished to make one other bot, they would wish one other new fee technique.
Musk didn’t say what the brand new subscription fee would price, however described it as a “small amount of cash.”
In the course of the dialog, Musk additionally shared new metrics for X, noting the location has now 550 million month-to-month customers, who generate 100 to 200 million posts day by day. Nevertheless, it wasn’t clear if Musk is counting automated accounts — that’s, both good bots like information feeds or unhealthy bots like spammers — amongst these numbers.
This determine additionally didn’t permit for a direct comparability with Twitter’s consumer base pre-Musk, which was calculated utilizing a particular metric Twitter had invented known as the “common monetizable every day energetic consumer,” or mDAU. This older metric indicated the customers on Twitter who could possibly be monetized by viewing its adverts. Throughout its final public earnings in Might 2022, Twitter had 229 million mDAUs.
Musk didn’t increase on his plan to cost for X or when such a change would come about. However since Musk took over the platform final yr, the corporate has been pushing its customers to subscribe to its paid subscription product, X Premium (beforehand Twitter Blue). This $8 per 30 days or $84 per yr subscription service presents quite a lot of options like the flexibility to edit posts, half the advert load, prioritized rankings in search and conversations, the flexibility to put in writing longer posts, and extra.
X doesn’t disclose what number of paid subscribers it has, however unbiased analysis signifies X Premium hasn’t attracted a majority of X customers. One evaluation determined only 827,615 users at present subscribe to X Premium, for instance.
The concept of charging for X shouldn’t be a brand new concept for Musk. Platformer final yr reported that Musk was weighing the idea of placing all of Twitter behind a paywall, in actual fact.
The bigger dialog between Musk and Netanyahu centered on AI expertise and its regulation, although the subject of hate speech on X got here up. Right here, Musk once more claimed he’s “in opposition to antisemitism.” Musk newest spat earlier this noticed him threatening to file a defamation lawsuit in opposition to the Anti-Defamation League, which has accused each Musk and X of being antisemitic.