Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has vowed to stop bots from posting on X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—by charging new users a dollar a year to post on the service. The annual subscription, which was announced on Tuesday evening, is part of a program that the company has dubbed “Not A Bot,” and it will first be tested in New Zealand and the Philippines.
According to a post from X, subscription models are the best way to combat bots. It further noted that “new, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post and interact with other posts.” Other users will not be affected, and the company maintained this wasn’t about padding the bottom line.
“Within this test, existing users are not affected,” X added. “This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.”
There has been no word on when subscriptions could roll out worldwide.
Battling The Bots
Even before Musk acquired the social media platform a year ago, he warned that bots were a major problem—and his claims that there was underreporting of bots on the platform were part of his efforts to back out of the $44 billion acquisition deal.
“Musk’s assertion about fees and bots is partly correct. It could well apply to bots that are being deployed as a nuisance by individuals or small groups,” technology industry analyst Charles King of Pund-IT explained.
Yet, a $1 subscription may not be all that successful.
“It is highly unlikely that asking users to pay $1 per year will stop bots, because Musk has been ambiguous about how this money will be invested in anti-bot efforts,” Dr. Julianna Kirschner, lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, also noted.
Instead, she suggested that practices that actually lower bot creation and usage require a large number of experts with strong programming and coding skills.
“When the platform was known as Twitter, prior to Musk’s takeover, there was a substantial team dedicated to this very effort,” Kirschner added.
Although bots persisted even then, the efforts to curb their growth was noticeable, as common activity patterns were tracked and addressed. By contrast, in recent months, bots have exploded in use on X because there are no longer safeguards put in place.
“Bots have become more elusive from traditional tracking efforts, because the technology needed to manage them has become more sophisticated. Some of this has to do with evolving AI tools to manage bot activity. However, even less advanced bot efforts still make it through for wide distribution on X,” Kirschner continued.
The crux of the issue remains the elimination of a team of human experts to respond to and manage the traditional and changing nature of bots.
“Until a team resembling the skillsets of those who were laid off from X is restored, bot activity is only going to increase,” Kirschner warned.
A subscription likely won’t dissuade bad actors.
“I doubt that nations trying to sow social and political discord, like impacting elections, and criminal groups that use bots for financial gain will be deterred,” Pund-IT’s King explained. “For them, an annual ‘buck a bot’ will be an affordable cost of doing business.”
Will Users Be On Board?
The other big question to ask is whether users of X will be willing to pay even $1 to continue posting on the service. The company may claim this isn’t a profit driver, but consumers are already at a breaking point when it comes to paying for every service—especially ones that were once free.
“Over the last 20 years, the product on social media was user activity, which was freely provided by users actively participating on a platform,” Kirschner suggested. “A shift in this model where the users become both the buyer and creator of content is unlikely to succeed. The most likely scenario is one where users leave X entirely, which they are beginning to do.”
This could also explain why X is starting small with its subscription model, and it may be simply testing the waters.
“Beginning a subscription plan in New Zealand and the Philippines qualifies as a ‘run it up the flagpole and see if it gets shot down’ move,” King added. “I don’t know the number of X’s users in those countries but it isn’t likely to be large enough to hurt the company financially if they resist en masse.”
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