What Musk’s high-stakes plan to charge for tweeting really means
X, formerly known as Twitter, is charging $US1 a month for New Zealand and Philippines users to post in an experiment that could go global. So what’s Elon thinking now?
The news: X, formerly known as Twitter, is charging $US1 a month for New Zealand and Philippines users to post on its platform in a high-stakes experiment designed to stop spam accounts and increase its ailing revenue.
Why it matters: No other established social media site has told its users they cannot post without paying. Posts are the lifeblood of social media. As more sites have come to be dominated by influencers and professional vloggers, most people have stopped posting. Elon Musk’s move will test whether they will not only keep posting, but pay for the privilege.
Financially, Musk needs it to work. X’s revenue cratered after he purchased the company and plunged it into chaos while simultaneously saddling it with huge loans.
What they said: When he bought Twitter last year, Musk declared he would: “Defeat the spambots or die trying.”
These computer-controlled accounts post spam messages, often trying to convince users to sign up to pornographic services, cryptocurrencies or fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes. Yet, anecdotally, they are more numerous than ever. The European Union has named X the worst service for misinformation.
Musk is not satisfied. In a blog post this week, X revealed it had started testing the payment program called “Not A Bot”.
It is in line with Musk’s previous musings that the only way to fully stop spam is to change the economics. Spam content is cheap to make but requires huge volumes to entrap the occasional victim. Even a marginal charge would make X a less attractive destination for spammers.
“This will evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us combat bots and spammers on X, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount,” the company wrote. “Within this test, existing users are not affected.”
If it works, X has implied that the new subscription model will be rolled out for all users everywhere.
Our take: We think Musk’s experiment will fail but hope it succeeds. Either outcome is fine.
It will fail because it will cull the number of users on the platform, which is the lifeblood of any social media network.
While $US1 a month is very little for a power user, as many journalists and political activists are, the friction of getting out a credit card and paying is a big impediment for someone trying X for the first time.
Engagement on the platform is already noticeably down, and even if committed posters choose to pay, they now won’t have the mass of people liking, replying and reposting their missives. That deadens the network.
X has sustained so much damage that a decisive move to hang out somewhere else online could be useful.
In most business environments, the demise of a mismanaged incumbent can be good for upstarts. This might give one of X’s several much-hyped but in practice languishing rivals, such as Bluesky (too small), Mastodon (too decentralised) or Threads (too averse to news), the boost necessary to become the dominant text-based social app.
But if the X subscription model succeeds against the odds, it would be a sign that users are willing to pay for social media. Like the way that journalism has shifted from ads to subscriptions, that could be a good thing.
Ads are frustrating for users and encourage social media companies to try to make them monopolise their attention. They also require data harvesting and personalised targeting that can be highly invasive.
Having a viable subscription business requires engaging posts too, but users cannot be made to feel tricked, used or as if they have binged on junk food. If they do, they will leave.
Musk hasn’t promised to remove ads, but showing that a social media network can make significant revenue from subscriptions would be a first step towards it.
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