Elon Musk plans to charge a fee from new users to combat bot onslaught on X

Elon Musk is planning to charge new X users a small fee in order to address the proliferation of automated accounts, commonly known as bots. Responding to a user's query about changes on the platform, Musk emphasised that charging a small fee upon registration is the most effective strategy to counteract the influx of bots, which are currently adept at circumventing verification measures like CAPTCHA.

Musk later clarified in a separate response that new accounts will gain posting privileges after a three-month grace period, exempt from the initial fee requirement.

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 specific fees for new users remain undisclosed, a common trend with announcements concerning the social network.

Last October, X initiated a payment system in New Zealand and the Philippines, charging unverified users an annual fee of USD 1. These users were restricted to passive engagement, such as reading posts, until payment was made to access interactive features like posting, liking, and commenting. Musk may extend a similar fee structure to other regions.

Recently, X announced a concerted effort to purge spam accounts, forewarning users of potential impacts on their follower counts. However, by introducing fees for new users, the platform appears to be targeting the bot issue with more precision.

Although Musk has vocalized concerns about combatting AI bots, X updated its policy last year to permit the use of public posts for training machine learning and AI models. Additionally, Musk's AI company xAI announced plans in July 2023 to utilise public posts for model training purposes.