Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform
variety.com
Elon Musk may flip the switch to make X — the social network formerly known as Twitter — an entirely subscription-based platform. Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twi…

Elon Musk said he will charge all X/Twitter users a fee to be on the platform. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots," said Elon. I can’t believe that this is the only solution he can think of.

Dealing with bots would be Elon Musk’s responsibility, considering he’s the only one profiting significantly from X, not us. Elon Musk steals our data and censors each of our posts, now he even expects us to pay to clean up the mess he created.

Plus, the problems with X go beyond just bots. The algorithm and programming decisions are negatively impacting user experience and manipulating people’s minds.

We want a town square where everyone is free to have & voice an opinion. I do not believe we have to pay ”a small monthly payment” for such a place, especially in a country that should value these freedoms & suppressing ideas.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      No. Not today at any rate. I probably would have supported a subscription for Reddit 5-8 years ago. The community and content was better. Lemmy/Kbin/Mastodon hasn’t caught up to that level yet so I don’t see a point in paying for that. Facebook has gone full stupid - they should pay me for all the data mining they use me and my connections for. I rarely use FB for the social aspect anymore, I belong to many hobby and interest groups on it and use it more like a forum than a “highlight reel of my life” thing.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          That’s above my pay grade. I honestly don’t know. However, I’ll offer that Lemmy instances are somewhat analogous to the hobbyist or special interest forums of yesteryear. A “webring” of sorts. Smaller, cheaper, manageable by dedicated individuals…

          They’re not massive and centralized servers requiring all that goes with operating and maintaining them. Ad injection, legal teams, CEOs to pay…the fediverse is a completely different animal compared to big social media. It exists because of lots of little “pockets” and not the deep pockets of centralized social media.

                • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  That’s a tough hill to climb. The internet grew on the largesse of individuals who contributed time and financial support to smaller endeavors, whether it be software or a website. It’s going to be all but impossible to get people to pay for it when even big services like Facebook are free, that’s the conundrum and why ad revenue and personal profile mining is used to fill the hole. Unfortunately costs have risen sharply alongside bandwidth demands, so one can’t run a basement server without bottlenecking on size or costs long before reaching critical mass for a community - and that’s what you mentioned in regards to lemmy.

                  Like I said…above my pay grade. I hope there’s some way a distributed network like Lemmy can succeed, I really enjoy what it’s becoming. Maybe a hub-and-spoke system will be the final form…big instances supported by more commercial means and smaller instances run by individuals and private funds.

    • SeriousBug@infosec.pubEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I already donate to Mastodon development, and to the Mastodon server I’m on. It’s a good reminder to donate to the Lemmy server I’m on too.

    • TheMoose@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      It’s tough because we’ve had “free” for so long of so many services. But I honestly think yes, as long as it was something very low like $5/month at most.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I think I’d pay for Lemmy and Firefish. I like them both a lot. Not like a lot, but a tiny annual subscription fee.

      If they had lifetime memberships like Livejournal did that would be cool.

      Wouldn’t give Elon the lice from my hair though, in the words of the great Maria Callas about her mother.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I effectively pay to use my IRC, XMPP and email, since I rent a VPS. But that payment earns me much more pleasant usage experience (in case of my IRC bouncer) and a lot of cotrol over my servers in case of the latter two. So while paying a subscription feels a bit bad, I think it’s worth it.

        • sir_reginald@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          1 year ago

          small communities of self-hosters that offer the services to those who don’t possess the knowledge to do it themselves. These communities would self-host federated protocols (eg XMPP) so people can interact with others no matter which server they use.

          Ideally maintained through users donations. If you want to be less idealistic, maybe small co-ops which charge a reasonable monthly/annual fee and provide free services for those who can’t really afford to pay.

            • renormalizer@feddit.deEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Isn’t that the same for Reddit or Lemmy? The content creators and mods don’t see a penny either. Operationally, a social network probably requires a lot more compute power and somewhat more bandwidth compared to a site that serves mostly static content. But I don’t see why small donations shouldn’t cover that. The cost per user seems moderate, otherwise few people could afford to run an instance with 1000s of users without charging them.

            • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I don’t see that big a difference there tbh. The WMF nowadays also has a paid trust and safety team like a social media platform.

                • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago
                  • most data on WMF servers is media files, most of them photos; Wikimedia Commons has at this point nearly 100 million of those; probably still less than many social media sites, though
                  • this is true, but many people on social media are also only lurkers
                  • the WMF projects get lots of changes every minute, just look at the recent changes page
    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      No because it would exclude all the interesting people, I’d much rather donate to keep a door open for all.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          Interesting people barely have time to pop onto Twitter every now and then, they’re not going to bother if it costs money

          And I guess we’ll see which system ends up bearing fruit, I think we’re already seeing the capitalist walled garden model falter, I suspect your more collectivist model won’t have the momentum to replace it but while the commons might trip and start with a dozen different stumbles the sheer force of its ever growing ubiquity will carry it through.

          Especially as hardware continues to get cheaper and software more efficient, hosting a few thousand users on a federated server is already fairly trivial, its only going to get easier the more hurdles are removed through innovation and tech creep.

    • DreBeast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      No. With the current model of social media selling advertising space, user data, and now subscription fees. No, I don’t think I should have to contribute directly from my pocket to these mega media giants.

    • sucricdrawkcab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      The only thing that would get me to do it is for sports. It would have to have the games, shows, commentary nonsense and be able to live chat with other fans /players. A full experience of sports. Outside of that not a chance.