Elon Musk Announces Plans to Impose Fees on X Platform Users

Musk said in response to an account on “X” regarding recent changes to the platform: “Unfortunately, imposing a simple fee for new user access to writing is the only way to limit the relentless robot attack.”

He added that current artificial intelligence (and bot farmers) can easily pass the “are you a robot” test, referring to current tools such as CAPTCHA.

In response to another post on “X,” Musk said that new accounts would be able to publish on the platform three months after their creation date without paying those fees.

No specific date

Musk, who acquired the “X” platform in late 2022, did not announce a date for the implementation of the new policy or the amount of fees he would impose on users.

The policy was initially being tested to help reduce spam and improve the experience for users overall.

— X Daily News (@xDaily) April 15, 2024

War on fake accounts

Since acquiring the platform, Musk has declared war on fake and inactive accounts that have not tweeted or logged in for years.

Last April, the platform removed the blue verification checkmark from the profiles of thousands of people, including celebrities, journalists, and prominent politicians.

Musk made account verification with the blue checkmark a subscription service, a step he said would address the problem of fake accounts on the social media platform.

In 2022, shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk announced plans to get rid of 1.5 billion of those accounts.

At the same time, Musk also announced that Twitter had begun “purging” the platform of fake accounts.

He added in a tweet at the time: “Twitter has started to delete many spam accounts at the moment, so you may see a decrease in the number of followers.