X will require new accounts to pay a small annual fee to post, reply, like, and bookmark. This practice has been tested in New Zealand and the Philippines and will now roll out worldwide. Do You Think This Is a Good Idea? I personally don't like it. In fact, if I wanted to come up with a method to harm X, this is exactly what I would do. Combined with the other problems small accounts face these days, it doesn't bode well for the future of this platform. War on Bots and Human Casualties I've been trying to be more positive towards X because I love what Elon is trying to achieve here, but I've never been a blind follower, and I can't support these decisions. Just like the war on drugs, the war on bots will not work. From high up on the mountain, this might seem like a good idea, but down here on Earth, I can't think of a worse one. Many people around the globe, including those in the EU, don't use credit cards as much as Americans do, automatically excluding a large percentage of the world's population from this platform. Moreover, the worst offenders, operating the largest botnets, can easily afford this, leaving only the poor affected by it. X Needs New Creators Small and medium-sized creators are the lifeblood of every social network. However, on X, they struggle to grow, can't earn money, and are unable to link to any other platforms for earnings. Now, with many people unable to join anymore, the situation is even more dire. If there aren't enough small creators growing to become big one day, this platform doesn't have a future and will simply fizzle out over time. A new app will come along and sweep it all up. I see a lot of people leaving already, frustrated with the way things are going here. And these are not people who categorically hate on Elon Musk; quite the opposite, they came here after the takeover, believing this to be the future. But if new accounts can't reach anyone, grow, or earn money here, it won't work. Charging new users to participate will turn this into Elon Musk's personal fan club. And I might even stick around for that, but this isn't what the 'everything app' and the 'town square for humanity' should look like.
Agree and see your point of view, it's true. But paid apps are better. And if gonna be just an annual fee separate from the subscription tiering, it's absolutely ok. Yet, it's not a fix for the core problem. It's a reaction. When we think more, single annual fee won't help with anything, at all. Bots and AI can pass that.
@alexutopia Won't be able to attract normies to this app now, the vast majority of the normies and non tech people hate Elon and this just adds to the difficulty. Big corpo move, I don't think it's a good idea.
@alexutopia Someone needs to come up with a way of disguishing a bot from a human because if this doesn't happen then the humans will always find a way in 😏
@alexutopia Yep, lots of perfect points here. 💯 I’m shocked that @elonmusk doesn’t seem to realize how harmful this would be for both platform growth and user retention. Really hope X doesn’t move forward with these plans. 😔