Musk wants to introduce an X subscription for all users and receives strange praise

For Elon Musk, a payment model for all users of X (formerly Twitter) is crucial to combat bots on the platform. The tech billionaire said this in a conversation with Israel’s right-wing conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the magazine ‘Insider’ reports. Only with a paywall can you get rid of the “huge army of bots” on the service, Musk said during the conversation, which aired on X.

Musk hopes that the creators of such automated accounts will be deterred by the financial costs. Even if a bot account only costs a small fee, the effective cost for many of them is very high, Musk says.

This isn’t the first time Musk has considered a paywall for all X users. The billionaire had already discussed such a financing model with his advisor David Sacks last year, the magazine ‘Platformer’ reported at the time.

Later, contributions from paying members will also be given priority.

Netanyahu praises Musk

Musk and Netanyahu spoke on Monday about the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence. AI can be “a blessing and a curse” at the same time, Netanyahu said at the post-landing meeting in San Jose, California.

Like Netanyahu, Musk, who recently founded an AI company of his own, spoke out in favor of control mechanisms. Musk called AI “potentially the greatest threat to civilization.” Netanyahu praised Musk’s actions against anti-Semitism on social networks.

Musk threatened the Jewish Anti-Defamation League

Several studies have previously shown that hate speech and anti-Semitic messages have increased since Musk took over Twitter. Musk then sued critical online researchers who exposed online hate speech and disinformation and exposed the social network’s poor content moderation.

In early September, Musk also announced that he would consider a defamation lawsuit against the Jewish-led civil rights organization Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The American organization is committed to combating anti-Semitism and extremism and criticized X for not removing anti-Semitic messages decisively enough. The ADL spoke of an “anti-Semitic campaign” on the platform. The reasons included anti-Semitic messages and Musk’s attacks on Jewish financier George Soros. Musk then spoke of defamation and claimed that the ADL urged advertisers to avoid the platform.

X is looking for new revenue because advertising revenue has fallen sharply. Many large companies no longer want to advertise on X because they are afraid of losing their image. Others take advantage of the lower advertising prices and continue advertising on X.

Apple, for example, traditionally one of Twitter’s largest advertising clients, continues to serve ads on Musk’s platform. Powerful Apple influencers such as John Gruber questioned this decision in light of the Anti-Defamation League’s allegations.

When asked about this in an interview with CBS on Sunday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said anti-Semitism was “horrible.” But the Twitter follower is “an important asset. I like the concept that it is there for discourse and serves as a marketplace.” In doing so, the Apple boss adopted Musk’s story about freedom of expression and democracy, which had to be saved almost one by one.