New X users may have to pay a fee to post

Billionaire Elon Musk has been on a crusade against bots on X. Because of this, we got the news that he was thinking of charging a small fee to use the platform. Well, it appears that he’s no longer just thinking about it. According to a new report, new users may have to pay a fee to post or otherwise interact on X. This comes shortly after the news that X was taking away the ability to hide verification checkmarks.

This is something that Elon Musk has been floating for a bit, but never really pulled the trigger on. Ever since before he bought the platform, which was then called Twitter, he has been working to eliminate all of the bots on the platform. So, that’s remained one of his missions ever since the $44 billion check cleared.

New users on X may have to pay a fee to post

Right now, you most likely don’t have to worry about paying the fee to make new posts. Elon Musk is only testing this new fee for the time being. He’s testing this fee in New Zealand and the Philippines. Users in those New Zealand have reportedly been prompted to pay $1.75, which is around $1 USD.

The company isn’t charging them per post, and it’s not arbitrarily charging users who’ve had their accounts for a while. Elon Musk is only imposing this fee on new accounts that are less than three months old. When a person makes an account, in order to start posting, commenting, or even liking posts, they will have to pay the $1 entry fee. This is something that Elon Musk feels will deter bots from coming onto the platform.

At this point, we have no idea if that’s going to work. There are some bots that already pay to use the platform, so this shouldn’t be much of an issue for them. Also, we have to remember that this could also deter new legitimate users from wanting to use X.

There are very specific times when people will pay social media apps. One would be a subscription service to gain extra functionality. However, why pay a fee to use basic functions for a social media platform that has historically been free to use?

We are just going to have to see how this whole situation plays out. This will, undoubtedly, lead to a lot more backlash for Elon Musk.