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Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform (variety.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm not sure if this is technically Technology news, but I can remove this post if it's in the wrong community

Archive link: http://archive.today/3XM6s

Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twitter during a wide-ranging conversation focused on AI that featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that it is the only way to eliminate the problem of bots, as reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.

Musk didn’t mention timing of his plan to charge X/Twitter users, nor did he say how much it would cost.

Musk, who also is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said X/Twitter ad sales have plunged 50% since he bought the company. “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk posted on July 15.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So I mean, if this was in lieu of data collection and tracking, this is what more of the software world should actually do. Running platforms isn’t free, and making the user the product is a malicious and unsustainable solution.

That said, I certainly wouldn’t pay Twitter - I think I’d rather donate to a Mastodon instance, or pay for some other private alternative. Musk is awful for so many reasons, holds way too much power, and deserves no money of mine.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's actually a good point about how some services do require payment to provide safe service to their users. A very close to home example would be your local Lemmy instance. In order to run the servers and keep it ad (and tracking) free, each instance needs donations from their users. The same is true for Mastodon, as you mentioned.

The problem is, I would be shocked if Twitter actually provided a safer (or improved in any way) service. There are a other issues at play as well, but they all basically boil down to most users not wanting too give money to Twitter, and if they were ok with that, they would already have purchased Twitter Blue.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

I would be shocked if Twitter actually provided a safer (or improved in any way) service. There are a other issues at play as well

One of those issues being the idiot child in charge. As long as Musk is running the place, there's no such thing as safety for the users.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Fully agree.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

if this was in lieu of data collection and tracking

I guarantee this isn't in lieu of, it's in conjunction with.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yup. You can see this kind of stuff happening with ads in things you buy.

There was a model of "ad supported" and "pay to own"

But some exec figured out you could do both and double dip.

There is no world in which things get more consumer friendly unless it's forced