• Elon Musk has said that X is considering introducing a fee for the platform’s use.
• This fee would be a small one, but would end the former-Twitter’s 17-year run as a free site.
• X has been struggling with money since before being purchased by Musk.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said that the social media platform was “moving to a small monthly payment” for its use. The comments came during a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to discuss AI technologies.

While nothing is yet set in stone, Musk once again said that bots on the platform would be the reason that could force such a change, and see Twitter become a paid site after 17 years of free use.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” said Musk, who bought Twitter last year for $44 billion at a time when the company was only making a small portion of that in revenues.

“Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny — call it a tenth of a penny — but even if it has to pay…a few dollars or something, the effective cost of bots is very high,” he explained, adding that the universal charge would be “small amount of money” if ever actually implemented.

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During the same call, Musk revealed that X sees 550 million monthly active users generating 100 to 200 million posts every day. This marks a growth in users if the billionaire’s claims are to be believed, since the platform was seeing around 530 million monthly users in July. Musk could have been including automated accounts in the latest metrics, which include bots like spammers and also news bots and accounts that serve automated images or memes.

The changing of Twitter’s ownership has seen the launch of the Twitter Blue subscription service, now billed as X Premium, for users and companies as a means to drive monetisation of what was traditionally an advertising-focused business. Data from Mashable indicates that there are between 800 000 to 900 000 X Premium subscribers on the platform.

A fee for all users on the platform could also help offset ongoing issues with advertisers on the platform. Last year two of the company’s largest advertisers left the platform taking $40 million with them due to fears that the Community Notes feature could land on adverts and call them out for being untrue.

Musk himself said in July that advertising revenues were down 50 percent, which only further hampered the platform’s “heavy debt load.”

No information was given on when the platform will launch a charge for all users, or if it will introduce such fees in a staggered approach.

But with reports claiming that the company has stopped paying rent at some of its office spaces, money problems could force Musk’s hand sooner rather than later.

[Image – Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash]