X will begin charging new users $1 a year
fortune.com
X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. Now, the team is moving the idea into production.

X (Twitter) to soon begin charging $1 annual subscription in order to tweet and interact.

Next move must be to charge users deleting their accounts $1. And Elon can sell your data to make more money.

  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    73·
    1 year ago

    Sounds more like a way to ID everyone on the platform. And perhaps normalize this practice for other platforms going forward.

  • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
    72·
    1 year ago

    I’m gonna call it. This is an (obvious) attempt to squeak in monetization for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone’s locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it’s going to work. Nobody still on twitter is gonna care about $1/year to keep access. They’ll lap it up and thank Musk for the opportunity to be fleeced.

    Musk could still fuck it up by being overly greedy and ramping up too much too fast like he tried to do last year (or this year? I’ve lost track), but I’d say this has reasonable odds of working out.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
      241·
      1 year ago

      for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone’s locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it’s going to work.

      I’m not so sure about that. The internet is littered with companies that gave away their product for free hoping users would pay for premium features. When they didn’t and the companies then had to charge a minimum entry fee for everyone, people dropped the product. There’s a barrier to putting in your credit card. Lots of people just aren’t interested.

      • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You’re definitely right about that being the general result to these sorts of moves, but I don’t think it’ll apply as harshly to this situation. Like I said, anyone still on the site has already faced numerous insults and abuse at the hands of Musk. They want to be there despite all of that, or maybe even because of it. I do think a $1/month or something higher would be pretty likely to fail, but $1/year is such a low-level ask and will gently push the users there past the barrier to where the price can be raised higher later.

        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          $1/year is such a low-level ask and will gently push the users there past the barrier to where the price can be raised higher later.

          The amount being asked isn’t the barrier I’m referring to. Twitter could be charging one penny, and they’d still lose this particular group. Consumers have been burned by entering a credit card for a low or free trial only later to discover sudden fees they couldn’t get refunded. The only protection is to not give your credit card.

    • GenEcon@lemm.ee
      15·
      1 year ago

      Musk wants Twitter to become a ‘platform for everything’. Having a payment system in place everyone uses already is key for that.

      Not going to say that this is a good idea, but thats the rational.

    • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
      51·
      1 year ago

      Honestly I want this covered. Elon is a toddler who’s never been told “no” and he can’t stand not having all the attention on him. As long as he’s throwing his toys and sticking his fingers into light sockets, burning every bridge he’s ever built bought to keep himself in the headlines, I don’t mind spurring him on. Let everyone see how smart he is.

        • Augustiner@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 year ago

          I mean, idk how it is after the musk take over but twitter used to be a legitimate tool for political organizing. Iirc they used it a lot during the Hong Kong protests and it was a driving factor during the Arab spring. Free communication for the masses helps in these situations, especially in an otherwise state controlled media environment.

      • Ech@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        What’s stopping him from just pulling the plug if that’s his goal?

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      Well he has millions of sycophants that would fucking kill someone of Elon asked them too.

      It’s the exact same gift Trump has been pulling off, except instead on constantly begging for donation, hes just “selling” features on twitter.

  • the_q@lemmy.world
    21·
    1 year ago

    It’d be real cool if folks would just stop using Twitter. You can live without it, y’all.

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
    245·
    1 year ago

    Downvote Musk spam.

    The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle. Don’t be a useful idiot.

    • azulavoir@sh.itjust.works
      17·
      1 year ago

      It’s funny how this is becoming spam of its own right.

      Between schadenfreude and people genuinely wanting to know what to say when they tell other people to stop associating with Elon, I can see valid reasons to keep this in the news cycle.

      • alienanimals@lemmy.world
        54·
        1 year ago

        Someone posts spam

        Me: “Please stop posting spam”

        You: hUr DuR, aCtShUaLlY yOuRe ThE sPaMmEr

        This is exactly the type of useful idiot that helps billionaire Elon Musk stay in the news every single day.

    • StarManta@lemmy.world
      113·
      1 year ago

      For once, the money is genuinely not the point, from any point of view.

      The stated purpose, and I think it will accomplish this, is that no one running a bot network will pay this for their bots, so spam reduction.

      The likely ultimate purpose is to have the user’s payment info saved to reduce friction for giving Twitter money later on.

      The problem though is that they’re adding this friction on to the beginning, so as a result I think the most prominent actual effect is going to be 80% of free users (real ones) are gonna kill it then and there.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
        92·
        1 year ago

        What are you talking about? Will the spammers pay a dollar to reach an audience of 20,000 or 50,000 or a million people? Of course they will.

  • misterwu@lemmy.world
    15·
    1 year ago

    I bet it will go like this:

    1. First, it’s 1$ a year.
    2. If X survies this, they will eventually change it to 1$ a month
    3. Wait a year or so
    4. Increase to 6$ a month
    5. ???
    6. Profit

    Keep in mind that this prediction requires enough stupid people to actually stay on X and pay