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.

  • NaN@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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.