The chief executive officer of X (formerly known as Twitter), Elon Musk, says users on the micro blogging platform may soon have to pay for access.
Musk spoke on Monday during a conversation with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The billionaire said the company was “moving to a small monthly payment” for the use of X.
According to Musk, such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” Musk said.
“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots. 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.”
Musk said the firm will “come up with a lower tier pricing. So we just want it to be just a small amount of money”.
“This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defence against vast armies of bots,” he said.
Musk however did not give a timeframe for the implementation of the subscription plan.
The Tesla founder said X now has 550 million monthly users who generate 100 to 200 million posts daily.
Since the tech billionaire took over the micro-blogging platform, several features have been introduced to improve the service.
