NEW YORK, NY — (09-18-23) — Billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter/X, is now floating the idea of charging Twitter users to utilize the platform.  The story broke when it was published by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee, who posted on Twitter:

“It’s not the first time Musk has proposed making people pay to use X, which has, according to multiple reports, descended into a chaotic haven for hate speech and misinformation since Musk took over in late 2022. In fact, he had the idea just weeks into his tenure as CEO. Lee linked to a November 2022 article by Casey Newton about the idea of putting Twitter behind a paywall, a seemingly logical step Musk might take after the bumpy launch of Twitter Blue subscriptions:

But the new Blue likely faces larger problems. The existing version only had a little more than 100,000 active subscribers, Platformer has learned. The new version will be 37.5 percent more expensive, and its value seems murky for most regular users of the platform. It’s unclear how the company will persuade enough people to subscribe to justify the effort.

Twitter employees tried to sell Musk and Sacks on the idea of asking business accounts to pay for extra features, since many of them use Twitter to reach large audiences. But they were dismissed in favor of offering wide-scale verification first, I’m told.

Other employees have warned about a secondary feature of the new Blue that Musk added at the last minute: reducing ad load in the Twitter app by half. Estimates showed that Twitter will lose about $6 in ad revenue per user per month in the United States by making that change, sources said. Factoring in Apple and Google’s share of the $8 monthly subscription, Twitter would likely lose money on Blue if the ad-light plan is enacted. “The business fundamentals are just not there,” said one former employee who worked on the plans.”

Americans will remember this past summer when Elon Musk said that Twitter/X had lost 50 percent of its ad revenue, which prompted Musk to put Blue on sale for the cost of one fantastical cup of coffee that comes in a tea bag, which is 23 cents.”


The way to eliminate the “the bot problem,” may be to simply charge users who wish to use the platform. Except one has to remember that all a company has to do is pay for the platform service and continue to put up spam 24/7.

We will continue to follow this story and bring you developments as they arise.

Article by: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer

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