Elon Musk says X will charge users ‘a small monthly payment’ to use its service | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk says X will charge users ‘a small monthly payment’ to use its service

techcrunch.com

27 pointsthunderbong10 comments

If he hadn't already tanked Twitter, this would have been a good thing. $1/month, people would have paid and it would have set a new standard that people start paying for online services and away from ad based models that are destructive to society. But because he's ruined it, I doubt many people are going to pay and it might even put off other services from following suit.

Ignoring whether or not this would decimate legitimate site usage, I'm not even sure that requiring payment for access will solve the bot issue; those who are pushing a lot of the terrible bot spam and scams are also in the same group as those who would use stolen credit cards.

I don't think those are the bots he cares about, just the read-only unauthenticated users. For the value they extract from scraping, the costs they incur, and the opportunity cost of not advertising to real people who browse anonymously.

The replies of viral tweets are filled with sanctioned blue check spam now, it's apparently profitable at $8/month.

If I am visiting Twitter once in 3 months, I will still need to pay 1$ per month? if true, then even if I'd like to use Twitter more often, I will quit. What an idiot.

Wait until you need to pay just to read a linked Tweet.

The reason Elon hasn't put up a paywall despite clearly needing to, is because even he realizes most Twitter users don't care about Twitter. However desperation may convince him otherwise soon. I don't see what other options he has. He's projected to lose 2-3 billion a year even with all the fired employees and closed data centers.

I’m pretty much ignoring anything he says given so much is said and never done.

And this was the last nail laid in the coffin of the once great microblogging platform.

I'm really unhappy that there is no "good" platform anybody to seriously use without been censored or feeling free to express anything almost. All messaging is in hands of fev billionaires only. Sad.

I would not like to post something what I feel, and be afraid that my message or account gonna be shadow banned only because my opinion do not fit the conditions and terms. Hmm. Are we pushed to think and act like template humans ?

You could spin up your own Mastodon server. Hell, there are several websites in the darknet that allows you to post whatever the hell you want.

Expecting a "good" platform to exist, with a far-reaching and diverse public, but also without any moderation allowing anyone to post whatever they want is unrealistic. LGBT people will not want to be in a platform filled bigots harassing them, similar to people of colour or any other minority. A complete freedom of speech will end up push minorities out, then drive people with dissenting opinions away, and it will eventually turn into an far-right echo-chamber just like Voat and Truth Social.

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