Elon Musk, Twitter’s (now X) executive director and Chief Technology Officer has announced that the platform would introduce monthly payments to combat a vast army of bots.
Speaking during a livestream, the billionaire businessman did not offer more details on the fee including how much it would cost users and if it would include extra features.
A subscription for all users would make the effective cost of bots extremely high and would require operators to use a new payment method for each account, said Musk in a conversation will Israeli prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Elon Musk has been on the campaign against bots promising during the acquisition of X in October last year that he would remove spam bots from the social media site.
Why Elon Musk is after X bots
Bots have been a nuisance to the X social media site. To the giant network’s users, they bring the constant threat of phishing- a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as ransomware. These bots can also introduce malware into user’s accounts.
Additionally, they are a nag to digital marketers making it harder to check their accurate advertisement analytics.
Furthermore, X bots place users at risk of having their personal information stolen and can spread fake news and misinformation.
The X user base
Twitter, at the time of acquisition by Elon Musk had an approximate of 92 million users. In Kenya, 1.90 million people used Twitter, according to a survey taken in early 2023. This accounts to about 3.5% of the Kenyan population.
X’s premium subscription, X blue, has been charging a fee of approximately $8 for premium subscription features.
The paid feature offers the verification tick, lets users write longer posts and edit existing ones, and prioritizes their account in search results.
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Elon bought Twitter from its co-founder, billionaire Jack Dorsey who helped in the founding of Twitter in 2006.
He went on to rebrand it to X at the end of July 2023. Elon’s vision for X is to make it into an everything app, where users will be able to make video calls and even make payments.
His vision is modelled after China’s social media platform, WeChat.
