Musk Suggests Paywalling X

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Facts

  • Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly Twitter, floated the idea of a monthly fee for users during a talk he had Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.1
  • Musk, who’s also in charge of Tesla and SpaceX, said a fee could help to fight “vast armies of bots” on the platform.2
  • Previously, Musk has attempted to incentivize users to pay for X Premium, which gives subscribers more features, including longer posts and more visibility on the platform. But X is still free to use.3
  • Although he didn’t say how much a potential fee would be, Musk said it would be less than the $8 per month charged for X Premium and would be “a small amount of money.”4
  • Musk bought X in October 2022 and has since made many changes — some of which have been part of an effort to make it profitable. In July he said the company was in a difficult financial position.5

Sources: 1Al Jazeera, 2Independent, 3BBC News, 4New York Post and 5Business Insider.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Forbes. AI is getting smarter and it’s becoming more difficult to prevent bots from overwhelming the platform and amplifying hate speech. By charging a small fee, Musk can combat the bots while at the same time, he can open up a revenue stream that will make up for the dip in ad revenue. This is the right move in a challenging tech market.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Daily Mail. Charging a fee might eliminate a large swath of bots from X, but it will also scare off multitudes of users. There are too many competitors for users to turn to now, so this is the wrong time for Musk to suddenly deploy a paywall. In the face of personnel cuts at X as well, this is a risky move.

Predictions