Elon Musk unveils his latest galaxy brain plan to save Twitter: Charging new users $1 per year to tweet
Twitter owner Elon Musk has come up with a bold new plan to rid the platform of bots and attract legitimate new users: Charging new subscribers $1 per year for access.
The "Not a Bot" program, as it's known, is now in testing in New Zealand and the Philippines, where all new accounts will have to take two steps in order to access the platform: Verify their phone number, and then sign up on a subscription plan.
The «Premium» package, with its once-coveted, now-embarrassing blue check, is still available at a rate of $8 per month. But Twitter is also now testing a new, effectively mandatory tier going for $1 (or local equivalent) per year, which will enable users to «post content, like posts, reply, repost and quote other accounts' posts, [and] bookmark posts.» Those who opt out of paying will be limited to «read only» activities: Reading posts, watching videos, and following other accounts.
«This new program aims to defend against bots and spammers who attempt to manipulate the platform and disrupt the experience of other [Twitter] users,» the announcement states. «We look forward to sharing more about the results soon.»
I can sort of see where someone who's completely out of ideas might cook up a scheme like this to combat bots: Attaching a nominal fee (and more importantly, I think, the process of paying it) to new account creation is, superficially at least, a semi-valid anti-spam measure. But $1 per year is such a tiny amount that I have to wonder how much real impact it will have. 100 bucks for 100 accounts strikes me as a reasonable price to pay to be able to fire off a wave of tweets about the latest crypto scam.
The bigger issue, though, is the cost/benefit analysis that comes into play, particularly for casual
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