Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is making waves again, this time with plans to implement a fee for new users of his social media platform, X.
The move aims to tackle the persistent issue of bots inundating the platform and disrupting genuine interactions.
In response to a user’s post regarding changes on X’s website, Musk emphasized the necessity of charging a nominal fee for new accounts as the “only way” to stem the flow of bots. He noted that current AI technology, including troll farms, can effortlessly bypass traditional bot detection methods like CAPTCHA.
Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots.
Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024
Musk further clarified that new accounts would gain posting privileges after a three-month period from their creation, without requiring payment of the fee.
That is way harder than paying a tiny fee.
This is only for new users. They will be able to do write actions for free after 3 months.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024
Details regarding the implementation timeline and the exact fee structure remain elusive, consistent with the platform’s usual strategy of revealing information gradually.
This move echoes a previous initiative by X, where new unverified users in New Zealand and the Philippines were charged $1 per year for basic interaction privileges on the platform. This included activities like posting, liking, reposting, replying, bookmarking, and quoting posts. Musk may adopt a similar approach for other regions.
X has been actively combating spam accounts, recently initiating a significant purge and warning users about potential impacts on their follower counts. However, Musk’s proposed fee for new users signals a more proactive stance in addressing the bot problem.
Interestingly, while Musk has been vocal about combating AI bots, X updated its policy last year to permit the use of public posts for training machine learning algorithms and AI models. Additionally, Musk’s AI company, xAI, has indicated its intention to leverage public posts for model training purposes.
In a recent development, xAI introduced its Grok chatbot to Premium users of X, initially available only to those on the Premium+ tier. This move suggests a broader integration of AI-driven features within the platform’s ecosystem, potentially extending to post composition tools in the future.
By Noel Nortei.