Elon Musk could make Twitter pay for everyone

The social network

During an interview with Elon Musk on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the issue of anti-Semitism online and how 'amplify". Elon Musk responded that the company was "moving toward a small monthly payment for using System X."

“It’s the only way I can think of to fight vast armies of robots,” he said. “Because a robot costs a fraction of a cent – ​​call it a tenth of a cent – ​​but if someone has to pay even a few dollars, a minor amount, the effective cost of robots is very high. And then you also need to have a new payment method every time you have a new bot.”

Bots – accounts run by computer programs rather than humans – are common on X, where they can be used to artificially amplify political messages or fan the flames of racial hatred.

The conversation, which was broadcast on Musk accused the ADL of making unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism that scared away advertisers and hurt his company's revenue, and threatened to sue it for billions of dollars.

“From the point of view of the economic model, we could say that it is a good option for Twitter” to charge its users because the company “has never managed to set up an efficient advertising system compared to other “other social platforms like Meta,” James Cooper, director of the “Business of Apps” agency, told AFP.

“However, the value of Twitter lies in the network effect of having a large user base. Universal pricing of the service would decimate the user base and therefore destroy the value of the network,” he warns.

“At this stage, the best solution would be to increase the value of its paid subscription services, by improving its advertising offering and considering new revenue streams like transactions, rather than forcing everyone to pay for the current service,” he added.

The 'tech' mogul has made many changes since taking over the network for $44 billion in October last year, when it was known as Twitter. It laid off thousands of employees, introduced a paid option, removed content moderation and reinstated formerly banned accounts, including that of former US President Donald Trump. In July, he said the platform had lost about half of its advertising revenue.