X owner Elon Musk today floated the idea that the social network formerly known as Twitter may no longer be a free site. In a live broadcast conversation During his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Musk said the company is “moving to a small monthly payment” for use of System X. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.
“IR the Just road I Can He thinks to to fighting wide Armies to Musk explained. “because a bot Costs a part to a Pence – we call it a The tenth to a Shark – but until if He. She he have to Pay…a A few dollar or something, effective it costs to Robots He is very “High,” he said. Additionally, every time the bot creator wants to create another bot, he or she will need another new payment method.
Musk did not mention the cost of paying the new subscription, but described it as “a small amount of money.”
During the conversation, Musk also shared new metrics for X, noting that the site now has 550 million monthly users, who generate 100 to 200 million posts daily. However, it was not clear whether Musk was counting automated accounts — that is, either good bots like news feeds or bad bots like spammers — among those numbers.
This number also did not allow for a direct comparison to Twitter’s pre-Musk user base, which was calculated using a specific metric invented by Twitter called “average daily active monetizable user” or mDAU. This old metric refers to which users on Twitter can be monetized by showing its ads. During its most recent Q1 2022 public earnings, Twitter had 229 million mDAU.
Musk did not expand on his plan to charge X or when such a change would occur. But since Musk acquired the platform last year, the company has been pushing its users to subscribe to its paid subscription product, X Premium (formerly Blue Twitter). The $8 per month or $84 per year subscription service offers a variety of features such as the ability to edit posts, half ad loading, prioritized rankings in search and conversations, the ability to write longer posts, and more.
X doesn’t disclose how many paid subscribers it has, but independent research suggests that X Premium has not attracted the majority of X users. One analysis Only 827615 users identified Currently subscribe to X Premium, for example.
The idea of charging everyone for X is not a new idea for Musk. Last year’s platform mentioned this Musk has been weighing the idea To put all of Twitter behind a paywall, in fact.
The larger conversation between Musk and Netanyahu today focused on AI technology and regulation, though the topic of hate speech did come up on X. Here, Musk claimed to be “against anti-Semitism” and “anything that encourages hatred and conflict.” Of course, Musk’s recent spat led to him threatening to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League, which accused Musk and X of anti-Semitism.