Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, is to charge all users subscription fees

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.

Emperor,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

Over on Mastodon: brace for impact!

sentient_loom,
@sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’ll stick with lemmy and kbin. Mastodon sucks.

readbeanicecream,
readbeanicecream avatar

@sentient_loom for the win!

@MicroWave @Emperor

Emperor,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

I have to say it didn’t work for me, Calckey is much better but I may just not be a microblogging person as I prefer it over here.

sentient_loom,
@sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works avatar

Looking up Calckey now.

But I like Kbin because it combines a reddit clone with a Twitter clone for each sub.

be_excellent_to_each_other,
be_excellent_to_each_other avatar

Calckey recently rebranded to firefish.social

I migrated my mastodon account - it's much better in every way. (no offense intended to Mastodon)

Pixelle,

deleted_by_author

    •
    be_excellent_to_each_other,
    be_excellent_to_each_other avatar

    https://firefish.social/ is what I use.

    But (no snark intended) you are using it wrong if you are relying on your specific instance being populated. It federates with Mastodon, so just follow all the folks you'd follow on Mastodon. If you have a Mastodon account, you can automatically suck them over, and those who follow you also.

    Emperor,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    Yes, I haven’t tried kbin as I’ve been happy on Lemmy. It would not surprise me if Lemmy introduced a feature to follow people that would open it up more to the Fediverse.

    zockersanftmut,

    He’s so bad at running Twitter I’m starting to think it’s his goal to ruin the brand. Don’t know what for but surely he can’t be this dumb?

    Emperor,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    His intention isn’t to run Twitter, it’s to transform Twitter into something else and hope that he can drag enough of the old userbase with him.

    Fir example, it has been suggested he might be turning it into a "totalitarian social credit app".

    bostonbananarama,

    Did you honestly just link to the Epoch Times? Calling it trash would be too complimentary.

    TWeaK,

    In this case, what they’re reporting on has been suggested by Musk himself on more than one occassion. It’s basically been his lifelong dream to create a one stop shop X app, similar to WeChat in China. That’s what he was aiming for back in the Paypal days.

    TWeaK,

    I think this is really merely the latest in a continued assault against Twitter and free mainstream social media. They tried to make their own services that directly competed (eg Parler), they failed, so now they’ve bought Twitter with a leveraged buyout. Either Twitter becomes what they want it to be, and they invest further to cover the $13bn debt, or Twitter dies from the debt (which would not have existed without the buyout). With the current value of Twitter being estimated at less than this debt, the latter seems much more likely now.

    normanwall,

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Emperor,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    Oh indeed, crypto will be in their so Musk and co can grift the gullible but it seems to be heading towards being an “everything app”.

    That said, the subscription seems to go against these ends (as you’d want the maximum audience) but it does have the effect of making it more difficult for outside observers to monitor what a dystopian hellscape he has built there.

    be_excellent_to_each_other,
    be_excellent_to_each_other avatar

    I've been convinced for at least a couple of months that this is exactly what he's doing. Once having that realization, I felt it should actually have been really obvious the moment he decided to lay off huge chunks of the technical staff and was openly hostile to key software engineering folks who spoke out.

    jenniebuckley,

    you think? it’s been his goal from day one. he’s an attention seeker and not much else

    Kichae,

    Look, if Elon was trying to ruin Twitter, it would be flourishing right now.

    His backers maybe wanted to destroy the brand and the service, and they chose the right guy for the job if so, but the only thing Elon does is seek praise and attention.

    567PrimeMover,
    567PrimeMover avatar

    Not quite related to the conversation, but I think it would be funny if a CEO tried to run a business into the ground but ended up being the most successful and beloved CEO in the company's history.

    "I know, if I enact a 4 day workweek, nobody will have time to get anything done"

    "Okay so that didn't work... Maybe if I increase staffing, give everyone a raise, the overhead will eat into the company profits and nobody will want to invest!"

    "Um... I'll have the dev team drag their heels on product release! Nobody will want to buy our product if we release a month late. Heck, maybe if we wait until the devs say it's ready we won't release anything at all! This plan is sure to work!"

    frokie,

    This needs to be in c/writingprompts

    Kichae,

    That certainly would be springtime for them.

    TheThirdAccount,
    TheThirdAccount avatar

    This person gets the reference!

    StarServal,
    StarServal avatar

    “If I give everyone unlimited sick days, then they’ll never show up to work!”

    flipthetube,

    He is. He’s your average internet troll that made a few lucky decisions in the past.

    And don’t call me Shirley.

    TenderfootGungi,

    He was simply born rich.

    _haha_oh_wow_,
    @_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

    By “lucky decisions” do you mean “born into wealth”?

    flipthetube,

    His best decision to date, yes.

    billiam0202,

    What, you didn’t pick “Born to emerald mine magnate” at the character creator? It really is the only logical choice, you know.

    _haha_oh_wow_,
    @_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

    I feel so dumb now!

    KnightontheSun, (edited )

    Your username explained! ;-p

    Edit: Odd to see an innocuous joke get downvoted. Was the wink not enough?

    xeekei,

    Didn’t wanna spend 5 hours at the char creation screen so I just clicked “randomise”.

    YoBuckStopsHere,
    @YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

    Twitter gave regular people too much power. The rich moved to destroy that power.

    zcd,

    Anyone paying attention would notice this Pattern, they will be trying to fuck over the fediverse as well. Unfiltered social media gives the poors too much opportunity to revolt

    TWeaK,

    they will be trying to fuck over the fediverse as well.

    Will be trying? Have you already forgotten Threads?

    zcd,

    Threads happened so soon after the fediverse spun up it was like a contingency plan put into motion

    TWeaK,

    I mean, Threads was federated with Mastadon, which has been going for quite a few years now. Threads was more of a response to Musk’s takeover of Twitter, I think, trying to catch the Twitter users who had migrated to Mastadon.

    Bonskreeskreeskree,

    The fact everyone is oblivious to his intentions being running it into the ground as a tax write off astounds me. He didn’t want to buy it. He was forced. Make it lose billions and write it off.

    Phen,

    I was just thinking the same. How much is too much before Hanlon’s razor becomes dull?

    Kbin_space_program,

    I think the same. The original goal was probably to fire most of the workers, change the politics to match theirs, and just sit back and let the profits roll in.

    But that failed, so now they're killing the platform off with an intent of using the lost investment as a massive tax write off.

    TheFriar,

    Why couldn’t he be? There is ample evidence that, yes, he is this dumb and he’d had less press/more handling before. Remember, there was a different story about him. News outlets love their stories. The story was Musk = quiet, nerdy genius billionaire that was gonna save the world and Zuckerberg and Bezos were the quintessential villains in the press. Now that Zuckerberg rebranded with “Meta” and 2016 is in the distant past now, we hear much less about him and Bezos got a huge sympathy injection by getting divorced (and, I’m not even sure I’m remembering this properly, but the last thing I heard about him was his divorce and his ex wife getting half of everything).

    Around this time, the pandemic hit and musk became the richest man alive, the really dumb shit he was saying and doing was more visible (and embraced by the right) and boom. All credibility was gone, all the stories from Paypal and SpaceX about his childishness and need to be corralled became common knowledge, and his story changed. The media had a new story, a new target, and it was a profitable one. Put the microscope on him and he kept fucking up. Then he kept doing douchey shit, bought twitter, and from there the dumpster fire of this really public failing became the flash point to display his stupidity.

    My point is, he’s always been his dumb, given all the current evidence. It just wasn’t the story for a while. Now it is. So it seems like a new quality.

    fuzzybee,

    I haven’t heard much about Bezos since he sent Shatner to space and then was a total dick and cut him off during his post flight interview.

    His ex, on the other hand, has been taking her half of the divorce settlement and giving hundreds of millions to good causes.

    Best thing that man ever did was divorce her.

    Excuse me, I think today’s Amazon package has arrived.

    TheFriar,

    Yeah, that’s what I’m sayin. There was a time when Bezos was the richest man, he was achieving complete ubiquity and there was serious talk from people being so sick of him and his bullshit that there was anti-Amazon, anti-whole foods talks.

    He fades into the background, people guiltlessly keep ordering from Amazon, shopping at Whole Foods, and Bezos keeps raking in the money. I mean, shit, I literally just read an article about Whole Foods fighting to keep BLM pins/hats out of their stores (on employees, that is) using the ANTI-GAY CAKE/WEBSITE ruling and…crickets.

    It’s not just the news that loves their stories, we people do as well. They keep things nice and tidy for us, letting us know exactly what to be upset about and what to let go. Keeps capitalism working nicely (as, I’m sure, a fringe benefit).

    KnightontheSun,

    I am still not ordering anything from Amazon. We do exist. Dozens of us even.

    Bitrot,
    @Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    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.

    ChunkMcHorkle, (edited )
    @ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted by creator

    flipht,

    He put in some, financed more, and got backers for the rest.

    Some of his backers were involved with competing projects.

    In addition, he and they will eventually be able to take a loss, which they can carry forward to reduce their future tax liability.

    And while all that plays out, he gets to use it to empower fascism, which also will probably be used to make him more money via government contracts.

    If ever the government tries to stop him, he can now claim free speech violations.

    indulgence,

    He paid over 11 billion in taxes last year. He paid 44 billion for Twitter. Pretty obvious he’s trying to tank it to off set his tax implications. He will report a giant loss every year. If he can do that for more than four years, it’s a technical profit.

    TheHog,

    Anyone following GME knows exactly why he is doing it.

    Pons_Aelius,

    Let me guess. Paying a subscription will not mean the end of ads.

    I have been wondering for a while what he would have to do to finally crash twitter, I think this may be it.

    rynzcycle,

    No, but it will be the end of his advertising revenue. Does that count?

    givesomefucks,

    It won’t be the end of bots either, it means less users overall, and conversations can be influenced with 100 bots rather than 100,000.

    Small timers won’t pay that, but corporation, PACs, and the wealthy won’t flinch at that kind of advertising budget.

    And now Musk gets paid for them, he’ll never mention bots again.

    shininghero,

    Long live mastodon. And bluesky too, when they finally open up and stop with the invite codes.

    bender,

    This has turned into such a mess. I bet he regrets buying twitter.

    kent_eh,

    He’s narcissistic enough that he can never admit to having regrets.

    pigup,

    My theory is that someone has unflattering evidence of him on Epstein Island and other such things. I think those evil mob forces have him by the balls and they want Twitter killed subtly since the left organizes there and other countries have organized revolutions against authority there. So his job is to kill it and make it look like he just fumbled it. I think the only thing he regrets is whatever it is he did that gave people the power to blackmail him.

    FlyingSquid,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Maybe someone else took the horse.

    bender,

    I think epstein was part of the cia. The whole thing was an operation to control powerful people.

    pivot_root,

    /s?

    pqdinfo,

    While I’m OK with entertaining the proposition he’s also probably a pedophile given his obsession with calling other people that (albeit if he was a practicing one I’d have expected a victim to have spoken out by now, whether he visited Epstein’s island or not), the whole buy out happened very publicly and was very much in keeping with the instability and narcissism we’re increasingly aware he represents.

    • He made an offer to buy Twitter and accepted a contract that was very one sided. Doesn’t anyone else’s advice, thinks he can “fix” anything. Largely “hate bought” Twitter, his offer came after months of insulting Twitter’s management and accusing them of various frauds (projection, stupidity, pointless fighting, etc)
    • He realized this was a terrible idea after the fact and tried to wiggle out of it.
    • He continued insulting Twitter’s management attempting to justify pulling out and managed to break the only terms in the contract that would have allowed him to get out of it because it contained what was essentially a non-disparagement clause. Had he not broken that he could have simply said he was unable to find funding (true or not) and paid a $1B break-up fee.
    • Eventually, reluctantly, the buy out went through because he left himself no options.

    Basically the Musk we had started to realize existed when he lied about CaHSR and proposed a bad-faith vaporware “technology” as a replacement, when he accused a hero of being a pedophile for stating the obvious about his “help”, when he became estranged from his daughter because he couldn’t accept her having gender dysphoria, when he kept repeating the same claim about the readiness of self driving technology over the space of half a decade, screwed up in exactly the way we’d expect him to.

    He didn’t need to be blackmailed. This is who he is.

    Gradually_Adjusting, (edited )
    @Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

    If all 330 MAUs paid this, Twitter would net gross $3.6bn/month.

    Crucially, they absolutely will not.

    tallwookie,

    a percentage will. how big of a percentage though? he’ll recoup his investment in a few years would be my guess.

    eestileib,

    Not a chance he is going to get the value up to $44B.

    tallwookie,

    difficult to say really. investors play the long game

    eestileib,

    I am finding it pretty easy to say, personally.

    Torching the brand goodwill alone is a mistake that a 2nd year MBA student would mock you for.

    BolexForSoup,
    BolexForSoup avatar

    I mean I’m deleting it. I only have it because articles/friends/etc. have a link with something relevant. I only look at it out of convenience, not because it’s the only source. I am more than happy to take the extra step to Google whatever people were trying to show me moving forward. Though I imagine this will also have a chilling effect on the amount of Twitter links I am sent any given month.

    Gradually_Adjusting,
    @Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

    Well, for the sake of context let’s note that we are two people talking about it on Lemmy, for free, with no corporations involved.

    Whatever is next for Musk, I think if centralised social media needs to turn a profit then it’s probably not going to remain a central fixture of online society forever.

    blargerer,

    Obviously it depends on the price, but maybe 10% of a free userbase will be willing to pay. The problem is, that userbase is coming to the platform mostly for rapid news and celebs. Will it still be the best place for rapid news with a 1/10th of the userbase? Will celebs want to stay on the platform when their reach is reduced to 1/10th? I think this likely just starts a death spiral that substantially shrinks the userbase.

    tallwookie,

    yeah that’s probably more likely - eventually I’d imagine that the assets/IP would be sold off to the highest bidder, much as any other failed tech company. it’s a pretty common ending.

    Ertebolle,

    Not only that, it'll create a vicious cycle where engagement drops to the point where the people who still post on Twitter (politicians, reporters, celebrities, etc) no longer bother with it, thus leaving much less content for paying users, with the end game being that Twitter is the place where shithead tech bros and neo-Nazis talk to each other and pretty much nobody else.

    Gradually_Adjusting,
    @Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

    Just as nature intended.

    matchphoenix,

    Oh boy, now I get to pay to give Elon my dumb thoughts. Sign me right the fuck up!

    meldroc,

    Fine by me. Accelerates the process of putting that dumpster fire out of its misery.

    model_tar_gz,

    I’ve managed to stay away from Twitter while it was free.

    Pretty sure I’ll manage when it’s blocked behind the paper curtain.

    In fact, they’d have to pay me to join. And with all the new paying subscriptions they’ll have, maybe they’ll have enough.

    CeruleanRuin,

    Who gives a shit

    Fades,

    what is this clickbait bullshit??? I’ve seen multiple articles yet the wording is always ‘floated the idea’, but from the headline you could infer it’s an official announcement.

    fuck modern ‘journalism’

    orphiebaby,

    Yep, this is the final nail in the coffin. Most people will just stop. Good job boosting the Mastodon community, Moron Musk.

    QuarterSwede,
    @QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

    Honestly, my hot take is that Mastodon is already better than X. Less toxic, more feature rich, more flexible, and built to be decentralized.

    MrBusinessMan,

    It’s surprising that in all these years, nobody came up with this innovation to make Twitter more profitable but in just a short time period, Musk was able to figure it out. Goes to show why he’s the richest man in the world!

    BonesOfTheMoon,

    Well muskrat, you’d have to pay me to go back on Twitter so good luck with that.

    YoBuckStopsHere,
    @YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

    Mastodon.World stock is increasing

    Chocrates,

    Sadly people want their corporate daddy and Bluesky will get most of them

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