Elon Musk goes to war against bots.
Seemingly not content with challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage-fight, now Elon Musk is taking on bots and has introduced his long-heralded plan to introduce fees for people posting comments on his X (formerly known as Twitter) social media site.
As of Tuesday, October 17, X is rolling out its so-called ‘Not A Bot’ operation, designed to root out anonymous trolling accounts known as ‘bots’. New subscribers to X will still be able to read and view posts but only those subscribers who pay a new $1 annual fee will be able to post comments on it.
The plan is for people to register as new subscribers and give certified payment to X, meaning they have to provide personal details and a phone number for independent verification. This, in Musk’s own words, is “a step that is necessary to thwart the plague of bots flooding the platform”.
Musk spoke at length about the planned introduction of posting fees on X at a high-ranking discussion panel last month that included Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, saying “it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
In local currency, the new posting fee will be $1.43 NZD in New Zealand and ₱42.51 PHP in the Philippines.
As yet, there are no new details about the roll-out of this fee to other countries, presumably with X waiting to see initial results over a period of time before making their next move.
