Elon Musk has proposed introducing a small fee for new users on the social media platform X to tackle the issue of bots.
He believes that charging a nominal fee is the most effective way to combat the proliferation of bots, which can easily bypass verification measures like CAPTCHA.
Musk emphasized the necessity of a fee to deter bots in response to a user’s post about changes on social media platforms. He acknowledged that current AI and troll farms can pass verification tests meant to identify bots without difficulty.
Musk clarified that the fee requirement would only be for new accounts during the first three months, after which new users would be able to post without paying.
While specific details about the implementation date and fee structure haven’t been provided, X had previously implemented a similar approach in New Zealand and the Philippines, where new unverified users were required to pay $1 per year for access to posting and interactive features.
It is speculated that Musk might adopt a similar fee structure for other regions.
X recently announced a campaign to eliminate spam accounts, warning users that their follower count might be affected.
However, the introduction of fees for new users suggests that the platform is taking further steps to combat the bot problem.
Musk has expressed concerns about AI bots, and X updated its policy last year to allow public posts to be used for training machine learning algorithms and AI models.
Musk’s AI company, xAI, had previously stated its intention to leverage public posts for training purposes.
Recently, xAI made its Grok chatbot available to premium users of X who pay a monthly subscription fee, expanding access to the AI-powered tool for composing posts.
