Unpleasant Surprise for Internet Users in New Zealand and the Philippines: X (Twitter) Becomes a Paid Service

X (Twitter) paid, yes, but

A very unpleasant surprise awaits Internet users from New Zealand and the Philippines. In these two countries, X is now paid for all new registrants at a cost of 1 dollar in year. This measure was announced by Elon Musk a few weeks ago, but on didn’t know if it was really serious or how long it would take for her to see the light.

This program called “Not a Bot” was described in detail test was designed to enhance our already extensive efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform, and bot activity. This will provide a potentially powerful metric that will help us fight bots and spammers on X.” Net social adds: “New, unverified accounts will need to purchase a $1 annual subscription to be able to post and interact with other posts. As part of this test, existing users are not affected.”

As you may have realized, there is an easy way to get around this new rule: be a long-time (or recent) user of the platform. However, the service clarifies that this only applies to this test and therefore completely possible do I have to pay, anything? son Twitter experience in the future. As for new users who are not subscribed to the Not-a-Bot plan, they will only be able to read messages, watch videos and follow accounts. Thus, with this measure, Elon Musk turns these Internet users into pure viewers, and they will not have the opportunity to interact with those who agreed to pay. However, the latter will always view advertisements, which remains an acceptable compromise for business model by X.

Let us recall that Elon Musk caused a storm of indignation in September last year during a live broadcast of a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He then emphasized: “We are moving to a low monthly fee for using the system. But even if someone has to pay a few dollars or something like that, a small amount, the effective cost of the robots will be very high.” Are you willing to pay one euro per year to continue using X? Write to us in the comments.

What you need to remember: TestX becomes a paid service for all new users in New Zealand and the Philippines. dollar per year to distinguish these Internet users from bots. At the moment, former users are spared.