X, formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet and retweet

This is exactly right... A lot of bots already pay for blue since it promotes them and prevents them from getting blocked/muted so easily

$1/bot/yr will be nothing to bot farms

In other words the idea might have the opposite effect - keeping potential new human users out, but allowing the bots in

The galaxy brain shit here is that I suspect the bot problem actually doesn't concern Musk in the way he claims. If he can make it seem like there are fewer bots (because of these policies) while at the same time not actually getting rid of them, the engagement level stays up and the advertisers are happy in their ignorance. Bots are better users: they're not fickle, they don't go to sleep, they can be reliably expected to be posting more regularly than normal users. The trick for Musk is convincing everyone they're gone.

Yeah his plan is to turn it into WeChat/QQ. Starting its payments because he’s gonna try to do PayPal again, this time his way. Nothing insidious or revolutionary.

I was more thinking it's to test the waters.

A buck is affordable to most everyone who has the means to access Twitter.

Of course next year it'll be Twitter++ subscriptions for 20 bucks a month, as they phase out the 1 dollar tier.

I never cared for Twitter, and watching Musk's spin on it has been hilarious as someone with a long history in corporate IT.

Pre-edit: At the moment I'm refusing to refer to it by a ~_{tween edgelords name}~~ Musk's name for it.

Dutch government put up an instance as well; e.g. this is the handle of the agency for road and waterworks. @rijkswaterstaat@social.overheid.nl

Doesn’t remove ads (take money from subscribers or advertisers, not both, also print media)

Tell that to all the advertorial content from e.g., the fossil fuel industry on The New York Times. Print news has been accepting money from advertisers while charging users since before internet ads were a thing. They just hide the ads in more insidious, corrupt ways.

And $1/yr today could easily be $10/yr next year and $100/yr after that... all depending on what the Musky Man feels like on that day.

I can only approve of people paying for services they use. It isn't free to run. But there are several things to consider:

I don't mind paying for services, but I now have 20 different services. Each one is trying to extract the maximum amount of money out of me while giving me a minimum in return.

I also accept that those services are not free to run, but realistically, these companies aren't just trying to cover their operating costs, they're trying to further line the pockets of executives and shareholders.

And its never enough for them. I could give Twitter $100 a month and they'd still sell my data for a few extra pennies. I could give YouTube an unlimited supply of servers and bandwidth and they'd still show just as many ads.

We will never get the cost living under control until this corporate greed is addressed because no matter how much money we pay people, there's an army of psychopaths ready to milk them of every cent.

So fuck em. They can have an extra dollar when they can prove it will actually end up in the pocket of an employee. Otherwise, the richest man in the world can fund his own little reactionary pet project.

That's legit probably what's happening though.

That's because reducing the bot problem isn't actually what they're trying to do. They're trying to patch the gaping hole in revenue that advertisers left in their exodus

Do you use Twitter?

he can pay me $1 for a taste of deez nuts.

I'll do my part to promote Mastodon every time this happens.

And I’m a little skeptical that this will dissuade botting, since 1$ is nothing

It depends how many bot-hours you need to earn a dollar back. That's prohibitive for a lot of dragnet-type internet activities, which run on tiny tiny fractions of a cent.

With any change on the site formerly known as Twitter, there are 3 lenses to examine it through:

1. Reducing the massive financial loss that Musk will almost certainly take
2. Amplifying the voice of the far-right
3. Stroking the ego of the man child who owns it

This is probably mostly 1. He's looked at the number of users and said "what if they were dollars?".

But like you say, there's probably a bit of 2. Reactionaries are more likely to hand over a dollar for a Truth Social with outside their choir to abuse.

It probably won't dissuade bots and astro-turfing, but it will make it pay-to-play, with the richest welding the most influence. That's definitely 3 since by any other metric besides money, Elon is average.

Not anymore

Due to the low amount, I’d say this is more about combating botting atm

there's a conspiracy theory - use the fee as a way to normalize paying X for things and then pivot to paying through X for things until it's the fascist super app of elon's sweaty fever dreams.

i agree completely, and i've said it before, a small fee goes a long way to stopping spam and the bad kind of shitposting. It's barrier that a lot of actors, good and bad, can climb, but they'll be at least someone who can't or won't.

thing is, twitter has already eroded so much trust and relevance that i think for a lot of folks this might be the last straw. we'll see - much like the reddit rebellion it's hard to tell how many folks will actually quit from the noise alone.

For the fediverse i'm not certain at all. on the one hand many of us want the fediverse to grow and become more diverse. Fees are a barrier to entry. but i also agree, as you say, that mods and admins deserve something for their trouble - especially since their job is a lot harder on lemmy.

i hate to say, but maybe discord has it right? monetize cosmetics and stuff? i really don't know. Disclosure i am nitro subscriber, mostly for the emoji.

One bit he can't stop.

i stopped using X.com when it stopped being just a single "x".