Elon Musk said a small monthly service fee for using X could help fight bot operations on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
A subscription for all users would make “the effective cost of bots” very high and would require operators to use a new payment method for each account, the billionaire said in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Musk’s Tesla offices in Fremont, California on Monday.
Netanyahu, who questioned Musk about antisemitism and hate speech on the platform, had asked how he could prevent “armies of bots” from amplifying hate speech. X currently has a free tier and subscriptions for individual subscribers and brands, and Musk said bots are the “single most important reason” to shift to monthly payments.
Musk, who’s been in an ongoing conflict with Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, had said that while it was difficult to “police” the 100 million to 200 million posts a day on X in advance, he could take steps to de-amplify hate speech. — Isabella Ward and Marissa Newman, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP
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