X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines
The new trial, beginning in New Zealand and Philippines, is to combat bots and spammers, says X.
Since spez loves following on ExTwitter moves, I can't wait until reddit does the same.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, has started charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines $1 (£0.82) a year to access key features, as part of a new trial.
Those who opt out of the subscription fee will only be able to read posts, watch videos and follow accounts.
While there is a clear financial interest for the company to charge users, the controversial billionaire has said that getting people to pay for the service is aimed at tackling bots.
Paid subscribers of an enhanced service, called X Premium, now pay for more features like longer posts and increased visibility on the platform.
In recent weeks, the company has been investigated by the European Union for the possible spread of terrorist and violent content and hate speech, after Hamas's attack on Israel.
It has also been fined by Australia's internet safety watchdog for failing to cooperate with a probe into anti-child abuse practices.
The original article contains 365 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You can get a fresh batch of 50 or so stolen credit cards on darket for less than $20 in stolen XMR
This won't prevent a thing.
I mean that's obviously a turn off for a lot of ppl but I don't think the inherent idea is stupid if they wanna get rid of all of the bots
Scam bot operators will just use stolen credit cards - or even easier, iTunes gift cards that they get from the victims of their scams - to pay to "prove" that they aren't bot accounts. For the fake followers/interaction bot "services" it increases the cost of operating, but I doubt they spin up a bunch of new accounts for every client - that $1 per account can probably be spread out pretty thin. I don't see this solving the bot problem any more than prioritizing paid account replies did (it didn't work at all for that).
"scam bot operators will just use stolen credits cards -"
And that's not true. Yes, there will be a small portion that do it, but this is where this idea is pretty smart.
Taking your credit card information is a functional hurdle, but also a legal risk.
There's a bunch of companies and people who will stop using bots just because they can't implement it, don't want to implement it, or don't have the time. Also, don't forget if there's one person who provides 10.000 active bots, that means providing credit card information 10.000x times, but also 120.000$ per year. If you wanna do it legally, this shit is expensive, and probably not worth it for a lot of ppl.
And there's also a bunch of ppl who are weighting the risk of being exposed for fake credit cards, and they stop using bots because they are not willing to commit fraud.
I get that this will turn off even more users and it's obviously a bad pr move, but you can't understate that it is quite effective for the things he says he wants to achieve.
They're gonna need to hurry up with a worldwide rollout then
