Key Takeaways:
X owner Elon Musk has revealed a new strategy to tackle the widespread bot problem on the popular social media platform. New users of the platform formerly known as Twitter will now have to pay a nominal fee to make posts or interact with other users.
X Announces $1 Annual Subscription Fee for New Users
Musk noted this measure was critical as it was the “only way” to avert the bot attack effectively. He emphasized that current “AI and troll farms” can circumvent traditional bot-detection tools such as CAPTCHA with ease.
X’s change in policy was first noticed by the automated account ‘X Daily News’, which tracks updates made on the social media platform, before being confirmed by the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
The decision follows earlier experiments done by the company in New Zealand and the Philippines, where non-verified users were charged a $1 annual subscription fee to be able to post and interact with other X users. Without paying the charge, these users were only able to view content on the platform.
A new “Not-a-Bot” section was found on X’s terms and services page, where it is stated that new accounts must pay a “small annual fee” if they were to be allowed to post, like, bookmark, or reply to other tweets. However, the updated policy does not stop new users from following other accounts or browsing the platform for content.
By enabling a posting fee for new users, Elon is taking a fresh new approach to addressing the bot problem by making it expensive for bot operators to have multiple fake accounts on X. Earlier this month, the SpaceX CEO kicked off a “system purge” of bot and troll accounts on the platform, which might lower follower numbers for existing accounts but improve the truthfulness of interactions.
Defeating Bots Top on Musk’s List of Agendas for X
The new policy comes at a time when X is facing backlash over its inability to stop the flood of spam accounts that share pornographic material and promote fake or scam products.
Defeating the bots was one of Musk’s main agendas when he bought Twitter for $44 billion back in 2022. At the time, he declared, “We will defeat the spam bots or die trying”. Despite his various attempts to get done with the issue once and for all, Musk has failed to limit bot activity on X.
By implementing a global fee structure, Musk is making the push to unify X’s bot defense which could also enhance real user interaction wherein they will be provided with quality instead of quantity.
Musk is also working on improving the company’s performance by incorporating AI. In July 2023, the billionaire noted that his AI company, xAI, will be using public posts from X to train its upcoming models.
This was in alignment with X’s updated policy back then permitting the use of public posts for training machine learning algorithms.
Earlier this month, xAI launched its Grok chatbot for X Premium users, a feature that was previously only available to users of the higher-paying tiers. With these changes, it is clear that Musk is redefining X as a social media platform, where it prioritizes providing value to users.
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