After Elon Musk announced that X will soon charge a small fee to post or engage on the social network, Adarsh examines the pros and cons of this decision….
Imagine having to pay to post a comment on your social media handle! Well that’s exactly what looks like is going to happen after Elon Musk tweeted that X – formerly Twitter – will soon charge ‘a small fee’ to allow users to post or engage on the social media platform. The 52-year-old billionaire who bought Twitter in 2023 and renamed it to X said that the decision was to combat ‘the bot problem’, further adding that this was ‘the only way’ to stop ‘the onslaught of bots’.
Musk did not get into the payment structure but while replying to a comment by another user, he did add that new users would be able to post for free after being active on the platform for 3 months.
But this announcement should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the developments at X Corp ever since Musk took over. In October 2023, X had started charging new unverified users in New Zealand and the Philippines $1 per year. New users signing up from these regions could read posts on the platform but could not interact until they had paid the annual fee. Interaction in this context includes posting, liking, reposting, replying, bookmarking or quoting posts.
Considering that X has been fighting the bot problem for some time now, it is not entirely surprising that Musk has taken this decision. Earlier this year, X had announced that the platform was in the process of deleting all accounts that it deemed were bots. It had warned users that they might see a drop in the number of followers on their social media handle as any followers who are bots would be part of the purge.
But with the plan to charge new users, X Corp seems to have taken a completely new route to tackle the bot issue.
Why Bots are such a Menace
First and foremost, bots are a problem to X’s integrity and user experience. By spreading false information and propaganda, they cause confusion and polarization among users of the social media platform.
Simply by manipulating certain trends, bots can artificially increase the visibility of certain topics or hashtags. This can cause genuine users to falsely believe that there is widespread support or significance for certain topics or opinion when there actually might be none.
By resorting to harassment and abuse, bots can create a toxic environment by targeting either an individual or a group. Bots achieve this by using inflammatory content, extremist ideologies, impersonating real users or faking support for causes which actually have no backing. This in turn affects the genuineness of the conversations that trend on X and thus causing a drop in the trust quotient and reliability of the platform.
Musk’s Battle with Bots
In 2023, X had updated its policy to authorize data set creation for machine learning through the use of public resources. This included posts on social channels as well as AI models. xAI – X’s AI-company – had also stated in July 2023 that they were going to use public posts as training data.
xAI’s recent developments include the introduction of its Grok chatbot to X’s Premium users, who pay a monthly subscription of $8. This feature was previously exclusive to the Premium+ tier, which costs $16 per month. According to a report by Fortune, X is planning to extend Grok’s post-composing capabilities to all users, thereby giving everyone access to this advanced AI tool.
But these efforts were clearly not helping which is what has fuelled Musk’s decision to charge users.
The Pros of Charging Users
There is no denying the fact that introducing a nominal fee for new users will have some positives. For starters, this will definitely go a long way in reducing the number of bots. Since it will take an economic toll for fake and automated accounts to spam the platform, real users will not come across too much misinformation or harmful content.
This in turn will improve the overall user experience on the platform. Moreover, the money collected by charging the users can be spent on improving the platform experience and for fighting bots and misinformation.
The Cons of Charging Users
While there are the aforementioned advantages to this decision, there are some negatives as well. For instance, charging a fee will reduce the number of new users who would opt to join the platform. People who are not financially secure or are unwilling to spend money to join a social media platform will not sign up and this will hamper growth as well as inclusivity.
This will also have an impact on free speech as marginalized communities who cannot afford to join will not have a voice and this will skew information in favour of the more privileged communities. The social media platform also runs the risk of reduced engagement as these would be chargeable so new users might opt only to browse through content.
The Last Word
All said and done, X has valid reasons to start charging new users to post on the platform. Misinformation and spam are major issues in the digital space and any attempt to curb that is commendable.
But in his battle against bots, Musk must ensure that he does not lose sight of X’s democratic vision as this will play a vital role in the platform’s success and relevance in the years to come.
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