Rumors have been swirling that Elon Musk will start charging an entry payment for X/Twitter. The primary iteration of that seems to be right here with a ‘not a bot’ payment charged to New Zealand and the Philippines. Right here’s the newest.
As of October 17, X/Twitter is now experimenting with the subscription value in these nations as a strategy to “bolster our already important efforts to cut back spam, manipulation of our platform, and bot exercise.” The payment is just for new customers who try to join the service, it doesn’t affect present customers in these nations.
New customers in New Zealand and the Philippines might be requested to carry out a collection of steps to realize entry to the location. The primary is verifying a telephone quantity, which is tied to an actual id. The second is selecting a subscription plan $1 annual payment. Twitter says new customers who select to not subscribe could solely have the ability to carry out ‘read-only’ actions like studying posts, watching movies, or following accounts. Accounts that wish to submit content material, like posts, reply, repost, or quote one other posts’ feed might want to subscribe.
Whereas X/Twitter stresses this take a look at is just for new customers, it could not be shocking to see the requirement rolled out site-wide. Many social media websites are adopting a read-only stance for customers who aren’t logged in or a minimum of subscribing to the location or its creators in some capability. Reddit has restricted the flexibility of logged out customers to see content material—with customers needing to be logged in to upvote and remark.
Elon Musk floated a possible subscription cost to entry Twitter when discussing the platform with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whereas this new plan implements a few of what he talks about in that dialog—it’s presently restricted to new customers. Musk says he believes it will restrict bot makers’ capability to create giant bot farms as a result of they’ll want a brand new fee technique.
In the meantime, a brand new report from Reuters means that advert income from Twitter has declined precipitously since Musk’s takeover. Promoting income has declined 55% year-over-year every month since he bought Twitter in October 2022. U.S. advert income dropped by 78% in December 2022 in contrast with the identical month the earlier yr; the steepest decline in Twitter revenues since Musk’s takeover.