Elon Musk suggests he will charge people to use X as the ‘only way to protect against bot accounts’

Elon Musk, says his social media platform X, previously known as Twitter is “moving toward having a small monthly payment for use of the X system” in an effort to keep bots off the platform—a statement that comes after Musk has slowly put more X features behind paywalls.

Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twitter during a wide-ranging conversation focused on AI that featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that it is the only way to eliminate the problem of bots, as reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.

Musk didn’t mention the timing of his plan to charge X/Twitter users, nor did he say how much it would cost. According to Musk, X has 550 million monthly active users, who create 100 million-200 million posts daily on the social network.

Musk has previously mulled the idea of putting Twitter entirely behind a paywall in internal conversations, according to industry news site Platformer. Musk, who also is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said X/Twitter ad sales have plunged 50% since he bought the company.

“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk posted on July 15.

Currently, X’s subscription program — formerly Twitter Blue, now called X Blue, under Musk’s rebranding effort — is priced starting at $8 per month. One of the chief perks of X Blue is getting verified check-mark status, although this summer the company added the ability for subscribers to hide the check-mark from public view.

X Blue’s other benefits include the ability to edit a post within a one-hour window; a 50% reduction in ads; “prioritized rankings” of a user’s posts in conversations and search; the ability to post up to 25,000 characters (vs. the 280-character limit); and the ability to upload videos up to 3 hours long or up to 8 gigabytes in size.

Blue subscribers also are eligible to receive a share of advertising revenue, initially based on ads displayed in replies to their posts.