1y ago

X will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet and retweet.

fortune.com X will begin charging new users $1 a year

X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. Now, the team is moving the idea into production.

X (Twitter) to soon begin charging $1 annual subscription in order to tweet and interact.

Next move must be to charge users deleting their accounts $1. And Elon can sell your data to make more money.

100 comments

Sounds more like a way to ID everyone on the platform. And perhaps normalize this practice for other platforms going forward.
- Quick access to massive credit card info as well. Micro step to "the everything app"?
  
  Yeah this is a high possibility.
  People might think he’s just a bad businessman, but I think they’re overlooking the fact that he’s an evil businessman relentlessly pursuing his dreams of dictatorship based off of actual dictatorships… that is also very bad at business.
  
  Somehow I doubt this credit card info will stay un-hacked for very long...
- TIL my identity is worth $1 a year.
  
  No, your identity is worth negative $1. You're paying to give it away. He didn't offer $1 to get it.

I'm gonna call it. This is an (obvious) attempt to squeak in monetization for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone's locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it's going to work. Nobody still on twitter is gonna care about $1/year to keep access. They'll lap it up and thank Musk for the opportunity to be fleeced.
Musk could still fuck it up by being overly greedy and ramping up too much too fast like he tried to do last year (or this year? I've lost track), but I'd say this has reasonable odds of working out.
- Elon simps are already going "lol $1 i literally paid more than that for my coffee"
  
  and then the capitalism admirers: "I don't have problem to pay for a good service. What do you people think? Isn't it costly to run a good service?"
- for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone’s locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it’s going to work.
  I'm not so sure about that. The internet is littered with companies that gave away their product for free hoping users would pay for premium features. When they didn't and the companies then had to charge a minimum entry fee for everyone, people dropped the product. There's a barrier to putting in your credit card. Lots of people just aren't interested.
  
  There are also a whole lot of governmental, health and official bodies where putting through an invoice is a real pain in the bum. It forces a decision whereas previously if had been a simple business as usual process
  
  You're definitely right about that being the general result to these sorts of moves, but I don't think it'll apply as harshly to this situation. Like I said, anyone still on the site has already faced numerous insults and abuse at the hands of Musk. They want to be there despite all of that, or maybe even because of it. I do think a $1/month or something higher would be pretty likely to fail, but $1/year is such a low-level ask and will gently push the users there past the barrier to where the price can be raised higher later.
- Musk wants Twitter to become a 'platform for everything'. Having a payment system in place everyone uses already is key for that.
  Not going to say that this is a good idea, but thats the rational.
- I think he's expecting a tax break from twitter

We should probably stop devoting news cycles to this manchild and his vanity pet projects.
- Honestly I want this covered. Elon is a toddler who's never been told "no" and he can't stand not having all the attention on him. As long as he's throwing his toys and sticking his fingers into light sockets, burning every bridge he's ever ~~built~~ bought to keep himself in the headlines, I don't mind spurring him on. Let everyone see how smart he is.

I'm gonna continue my run of not giving Elon Musk a fucking cent.
- Unfortunately, if you're a U.S. taxpayer, you've given him a lot of your cents whether you want to or not in the form of subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX.
  
  Some of my cents. I wouldn't say a lot of my cents.
  I'm doing mediocre financially but it's not that bad.

Are we sure this man understands business?
- He purposefully is destroying it to prevent the poor from organizing.
  
  We can just organize on open platforms like mastodon instead!
  Yeah we're fucked lol
  
  You are overselling Twitter if you think Twitter can do that.
  
  What's stopping him from just pulling the plug if that's his goal?
- A lot of us are sure that he doesn't. He is a very skilled con man though.
- Im fairly sure hes intentionally destroying twitter
- Well he has millions of sycophants that would fucking kill someone of Elon asked them too.
  It's the exact same gift Trump has been pulling off, except instead on constantly begging for donation, hes just "selling" features on twitter.

Why?
That's such a bizarre amount of money it's not enough to dissuade scammers and it's not really expensive enough for anyone to care about, except in principle.
He really is a massive twat isn't he.
- and it’s not really expensive enough for anyone to care about, except in principle.
  That's why. Because once people spend some money, they'll be less likely to object to paying more later.
  
  I'm not really opposed to spending money to access social media in general (although even before Musk took over, Twitter in particular could get lost) but if I pay money they have to promise to not advertise at me, or sell my data, otherwise what am I paying for?
- Why?
  Two reasons:
  He wants Twitter to be his 'everything app' and the next step in that process is making it a bank.
  He wants to sell people's personal data.
  
  Full name. Address. Phone number. Credit Card details.
  He wants them on his platform asap.
  Once that hook catches it's hard to take out.
  
  He doesn't need to charge anything to sell people's data though? They certainly already do that, no? If anything, this would just cause people to leave, meaning less data to sell.
  
  WTB 1 personal data.

It'd be real cool if folks would just stop using Twitter. You can live without it, y'all.

It isnt worth that.

Musk: "can I have a dollar, please"
And he claims he's a billionaire.
- For once, the money is genuinely not the point, from any point of view.
  The stated purpose, and I think it will accomplish this, is that no one running a bot network will pay this for their bots, so spam reduction.
  The likely ultimate purpose is to have the user’s payment info saved to reduce friction for giving Twitter money later on.
  The problem though is that they’re adding this friction on to the beginning, so as a result I think the most prominent actual effect is going to be 80% of free users (real ones) are gonna kill it then and there.
  
  What are you talking about? Will the spammers pay a dollar to reach an audience of 20,000 or 50,000 or a million people? Of course they will.

How long before they go bankrupt?

Downvote Musk spam.
The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle. Don’t be a useful idiot.
- It's funny how this is becoming spam of its own right.
  Between schadenfreude and people genuinely wanting to know what to say when they tell other people to stop associating with Elon, I can see valid reasons to keep this in the news cycle.
  
  Someone posts spam
  Me: "Please stop posting spam"
  You: hUr DuR, aCtShUaLlY yOuRe ThE sPaMmEr
  This is exactly the type of useful idiot that helps billionaire Elon Musk stay in the news every single day.

Guys how would you keyword block X?
- This was his plan all along, you can't /s
- Block "formerly Twitter", it might help for a time
- Blocking ‘Elon Musk’ often works.

Right. I really need to delete my sleeping twitter account.

Elon would like to leak your personal information to anyone who is willing to pay his price, please.
- And he will do that for you at the low price of only $1. Better do it now before the price goes up.
  
  So if I pay $1, I can read your tweets? Pass.

I bet it will go like this:
First, it's 1$ a year.
If X survies this, they will eventually change it to 1$ a month
Wait a year or so
Increase to 6$ a month
????
Profit
Keep in mind that this prediction requires enough stupid people to actually stay on X and pay
- Keep in mind that this prediction requires enough stupid people to actually stay on X and pay
  So it's definitely gonna happen.
  
  As long as Musk keeps courting the right, there will be a near-bottomless supply of morons to grift.

X would like to collect a very large amount of payment information from a lot of users to then store in their incredibly mismanaged infrastructure.

That would kill 99% of the bot accounts after a while as the older accounts cycle out with bans.
But this kills X too. Nothing was lost.
- I’m not sure it kills bot farms. It just raises the entry cost for the bot farm business.

Patiently waiting for the bankruptcy of this company.

Because its safe to store your credit card info with Musk, surely

Elon took Saudi money and money from who knows what other investors to kill Twitter. It’s all done deliberately and just before an American presidential election year.
Make no mistake. They have a plan.
- Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence
- wouldn't the smarter move be to keep it running but just really bias the fuck out of it next year? I swear people always want to read 3d chess into the mistakes of billionaires and dictators for some reason
- I hate musk and think he's an idiot, but people are apathetic enough to let everything go to shit without their plan.
  They may have one, you're probably right, but it's still a dumb plan.

Imagine paying money to interact with celebrity shitposts when you can do it here for free.

Why are people still using and supporting this hot garbage!?

He's going to learn what mobile games already learned, that the first transaction is the hardest no matter the cost. Also alienates like everyone without a bank account.
It's not even a price issue, it's a logistics issue. Also who knows if people will even trust him with their financial details.

Not a good decision.
- Nah, it lines up to the previous 34 decisions he made since we took over.
- As a measure to make sure people don't operate bots, it's fine in theory. The problem becomes that this will not stop Russian, Chinese, and even American state actors from running bot farms. It'll just be an additional line item on the budget each year.