Billionaire also says platform has 550 million monthly users generating up to 200m posts a day

Elon Musk has indicated that X, formerly known as Twitter, is preparing to charge all users for accessing the platform.

The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.

Speaking in a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest person suggested that X was going to charge its user base. Currently, Twitter only charges users for its subscription service X Premium, which offers perks such as a verified account checkmark and costs $11 a month in the US for iPhones and £11 in the UK.

    • flipthetube@lemmy.worldEnglish
      913·
      1 year ago

      He is. He’s your average internet troll that made a few lucky decisions in the past.

      And don’t call me Shirley.

      • zcd@lemmy.ca
        293·
        1 year ago

        Anyone paying attention would notice this Pattern, they will be trying to fuck over the fediverse as well. Unfiltered social media gives the poors too much opportunity to revolt

        • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
          172·
          1 year ago

          they will be trying to fuck over the fediverse as well.

          Will be trying? Have you already forgotten Threads?

          • zcd@lemmy.ca
            162·
            1 year ago

            Threads happened so soon after the fediverse spun up it was like a contingency plan put into motion

            • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
              57·
              1 year ago

              I mean, Threads was federated with Mastadon, which has been going for quite a few years now. Threads was more of a response to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, I think, trying to catch the Twitter users who had migrated to Mastadon.

    • Kichae@kbin.social
      322·
      1 year ago

      Look, if Elon was trying to ruin Twitter, it would be flourishing right now.

      His backers maybe wanted to destroy the brand and the service, and they chose the right guy for the job if so, but the only thing Elon does is seek praise and attention.

      • 567PrimeMover@kbin.social
        41·
        1 year ago

        Not quite related to the conversation, but I think it would be funny if a CEO tried to run a business into the ground but ended up being the most successful and beloved CEO in the company’s history.

        “I know, if I enact a 4 day workweek, nobody will have time to get anything done”

        “Okay so that didn’t work… Maybe if I increase staffing, give everyone a raise, the overhead will eat into the company profits and nobody will want to invest!”

        “Um… I’ll have the dev team drag their heels on product release! Nobody will want to buy our product if we release a month late. Heck, maybe if we wait until the devs say it’s ready we won’t release anything at all! This plan is sure to work!”

    • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
      152·
      1 year ago

      Why couldn’t he be? There is ample evidence that, yes, he is this dumb and he’d had less press/more handling before. Remember, there was a different story about him. News outlets love their stories. The story was Musk = quiet, nerdy genius billionaire that was gonna save the world and Zuckerberg and Bezos were the quintessential villains in the press. Now that Zuckerberg rebranded with “Meta” and 2016 is in the distant past now, we hear much less about him and Bezos got a huge sympathy injection by getting divorced (and, I’m not even sure I’m remembering this properly, but the last thing I heard about him was his divorce and his ex wife getting half of everything).

      Around this time, the pandemic hit and musk became the richest man alive, the really dumb shit he was saying and doing was more visible (and embraced by the right) and boom. All credibility was gone, all the stories from Paypal and SpaceX about his childishness and need to be corralled became common knowledge, and his story changed. The media had a new story, a new target, and it was a profitable one. Put the microscope on him and he kept fucking up. Then he kept doing douchey shit, bought twitter, and from there the dumpster fire of this really public failing became the flash point to display his stupidity.

      My point is, he’s always been his dumb, given all the current evidence. It just wasn’t the story for a while. Now it is. So it seems like a new quality.

      • fuzzybee@lemm.ee
        171·
        1 year ago

        I haven’t heard much about Bezos since he sent Shatner to space and then was a total dick and cut him off during his post flight interview.

        His ex, on the other hand, has been taking her half of the divorce settlement and giving hundreds of millions to good causes.

        Best thing that man ever did was divorce her.

        Excuse me, I think today’s Amazon package has arrived.

        • TheFriar@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, that’s what I’m sayin. There was a time when Bezos was the richest man, he was achieving complete ubiquity and there was serious talk from people being so sick of him and his bullshit that there was anti-Amazon, anti-whole foods talks.

          He fades into the background, people guiltlessly keep ordering from Amazon, shopping at Whole Foods, and Bezos keeps raking in the money. I mean, shit, I literally just read an article about Whole Foods fighting to keep BLM pins/hats out of their stores (on employees, that is) using the ANTI-GAY CAKE/WEBSITE ruling and…crickets.

          It’s not just the news that loves their stories, we people do as well. They keep things nice and tidy for us, letting us know exactly what to be upset about and what to let go. Keeps capitalism working nicely (as, I’m sure, a fringe benefit).

      • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        He was quieter before. If you look back to the beginnings of his Twitter account you can watch him develop an addiction, and he got more obnoxious as he craved the dopamine and developed a platform. That doesn’t mean he was super smart before but there wasn’t much of a place where he was speaking to the public outside of the media, and in those stories the Howard Hughes dreamer genius style was common. When people are quiet you tend not to think about them much otherwise. If he had stayed off of twitter the opinions about him would likely continue to be pretty positive.

        People do talk about Zuckerberg, it’s just in relation to fighting Musk or about Threads. Facebook is increasingly irrelevant to young people and Instagram has never had the same level of controversy. What are people going to say about him that hasn’t been said? It doesn’t mean they don’t still think it and now think he’s some good guy.

        Same for Bezos. His space stuff is what people talk about now and make fun of him for because he stepped down from most Amazon stuff in 2021. He’s always been quiet otherwise, what was talked about mostly was the crappy work culture he created at Amazon and the villainy was driving out local businesses. You might think people think Amazon is a great company now, but my experience is that people still aren’t super fans it is just a matter of selection, price, and convenience. People don’t suddenly think he’s a good guy.

    • Kbin_space_program@kbin.social
      101·
      1 year ago

      I think the same. The original goal was probably to fire most of the workers, change the politics to match theirs, and just sit back and let the profits roll in.

      But that failed, so now they’re killing the platform off with an intent of using the lost investment as a massive tax write off.

    • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been convinced for at least a couple of months that this is exactly what he’s doing. Once having that realization, I felt it should actually have been really obvious the moment he decided to lay off huge chunks of the technical staff and was openly hostile to key software engineering folks who spoke out.

    • flipht@kbin.social
      6·
      1 year ago

      He put in some, financed more, and got backers for the rest.

      Some of his backers were involved with competing projects.

      In addition, he and they will eventually be able to take a loss, which they can carry forward to reduce their future tax liability.

      And while all that plays out, he gets to use it to empower fascism, which also will probably be used to make him more money via government contracts.

      If ever the government tries to stop him, he can now claim free speech violations.

    • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
      3·
      1 year ago

      I was just thinking the same. How much is too much before Hanlon’s razor becomes dull?

    • indulgence@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      He paid over 11 billion in taxes last year. He paid 44 billion for Twitter. Pretty obvious he’s trying to tank it to off set his tax implications. He will report a giant loss every year. If he can do that for more than four years, it’s a technical profit.

    • Bonskreeskreeskree@lemmy.world
      53·
      1 year ago

      The fact everyone is oblivious to his intentions being running it into the ground as a tax write off astounds me. He didn’t want to buy it. He was forced. Make it lose billions and write it off.

        • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
          22·
          1 year ago

          In this case, what they’re reporting on has been suggested by Musk himself on more than one occassion. It’s basically been his lifelong dream to create a one stop shop X app, similar to WeChat in China. That’s what he was aiming for back in the Paypal days.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
          41·
          1 year ago

          Oh indeed, crypto will be in their so Musk and co can grift the gullible but it seems to be heading towards being an “everything app”.

          That said, the subscription seems to go against these ends (as you’d want the maximum audience) but it does have the effect of making it more difficult for outside observers to monitor what a dystopian hellscape he has built there.

      • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I think this is really merely the latest in a continued assault against Twitter and free mainstream social media. They tried to make their own services that directly competed (eg Parler), they failed, so now they’ve bought Twitter with a leveraged buyout. Either Twitter becomes what they want it to be, and they invest further to cover the $13bn debt, or Twitter dies from the debt (which would not have existed without the buyout). With the current value of Twitter being estimated at less than this debt, the latter seems much more likely now.

    • Jennie@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      you think? it’s been his goal from day one. he’s an attention seeker and not much else

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
    1332·
    1 year ago

    Let me guess. Paying a subscription will not mean the end of ads.

    I have been wondering for a while what he would have to do to finally crash twitter, I think this may be it.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      442·
      1 year ago

      It won’t be the end of bots either, it means less users overall, and conversations can be influenced with 100 bots rather than 100,000.

      Small timers won’t pay that, but corporation, PACs, and the wealthy won’t flinch at that kind of advertising budget.

      And now Musk gets paid for them, he’ll never mention bots again.

  • TheLordHumungus@lemmy.world
    71·
    1 year ago

    Haha, no one is gonna pay to use social media. I don’t use Twitter but you would never get me to pay for absolute garbage brain rot. I’m already on lemmy for that and it’s free.

  • Tygr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    48·
    1 year ago

    I think it’s one of his best ideas he’s ever had. I fully support this move and everyone else should as well.

    What a wonderful, genius, innovative idea. Such brilliance. I think he should also keep ads on there as well.

  • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    443·
    1 year ago

    If all 330 MAUs paid this, Twitter would net gross $3.6bn/month.

    Crucially, they absolutely will not.

    • Ertebolle@kbin.social
      331·
      1 year ago

      Not only that, it’ll create a vicious cycle where engagement drops to the point where the people who still post on Twitter (politicians, reporters, celebrities, etc) no longer bother with it, thus leaving much less content for paying users, with the end game being that Twitter is the place where shithead tech bros and neo-Nazis talk to each other and pretty much nobody else.

      • blargerer@kbin.social
        19·
        1 year ago

        Obviously it depends on the price, but maybe 10% of a free userbase will be willing to pay. The problem is, that userbase is coming to the platform mostly for rapid news and celebs. Will it still be the best place for rapid news with a 1/10th of the userbase? Will celebs want to stay on the platform when their reach is reduced to 1/10th? I think this likely just starts a death spiral that substantially shrinks the userbase.

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
        4·
        1 year ago

        I mean I’m deleting it. I only have it because articles/friends/etc. have a link with something relevant. I only look at it out of convenience, not because it’s the only source. I am more than happy to take the extra step to Google whatever people were trying to show me moving forward. Though I imagine this will also have a chilling effect on the amount of Twitter links I am sent any given month.

      • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Well, for the sake of context let’s note that we are two people talking about it on Lemmy, for free, with no corporations involved.

        Whatever is next for Musk, I think if centralised social media needs to turn a profit then it’s probably not going to remain a central fixture of online society forever.

  • athos77@kbin.social
    392·
    1 year ago

    The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.

    Idiot manchild proudly breaks something he knows nothing about, complains when it doesn’t work as expected, news at eleven.

  • Fades@lemmy.worldEnglish
    323·
    1 year ago

    what is this clickbait bullshit??? I’ve seen multiple articles yet the wording is always ‘floated the idea’, but from the headline you could infer it’s an official announcement.

    fuck modern ‘journalism’

  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net
    25·
    1 year ago

    It’s an interesting thought, but he misses the #1 problem with online subscriptions- sign-up friction.

    If you could just push a button and instantly be charged something, an awful lot of people would do it.
    But when you go from $0 to $0.01, you will lose 99% of people, because most people can’t be bothered to fill out a form, put in their credit card number, etc. Even if the amount of money involved is absurdly small, it’s not the price, it’s the friction.

    Now if he integrates the app with Apple Pay or Google Wallet that will help, a little. But only a little.

      • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net
        2·
        1 year ago

        Assuming the cost is stupid low like a $1/year, low enough that almost nobody will think ‘is this really worth it?’-- every required click or tap after hitting ‘subscribe now’ costs you 25-50% of the people who are still there.

        Make it 1 penny for a lifetime subscription. Just having to thumbprint for Google Pay will still cost you 25-50% of the people who hit subscribe. Make it a credit card form with card/exp/cvv/address/tel# and your purchase rate is down to maybe 1% of the people who hit subscribe.

    • appel@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      It’ll be the final nail. Traffic to the site will plummet because the vast majority of users will not want to pay and search engines like Google will no longer be able to index links to tweets, which of course will drive away the remaining advertisers. This is another disastrous move in a relentless string of bad moves by big brain musk. I have to admit that it really starts to look like he’s doing this on purpose. Anyone with more than 2 brain cells should see this coming, even an idiot like musk.

  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
    191·
    1 year ago

    It’s surprising that in all these years, nobody came up with this innovation to make Twitter more profitable but in just a short time period, Musk was able to figure it out. Goes to show why he’s the richest man in the world!

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
    213·
    1 year ago

    Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.

    Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.

    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s really working against him at this point. A lot more people that were looking to buy his products and services aren’t anymore.