What's worse, killing your own company because you can't get advertising revenue, or killing your own company because you are desperately trying to make up for the loss of said advertising revenue?
X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
31–40 of 181 posts
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#32>Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.” With so many of these billionaires and CEOs it is becoming impossible to tell whether they are transparently lying or complete idiots. Just admit you need the revenue and you want people to put a card on file to lower the bar for future financial transactions. Charging for a service doesn't eliminate bots, it just shifts the financial break…
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Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Well, here is X trying to make a product you pay for. No, this is an attempt to have it both ways. To do data collection / data brokerage and ALSO charge users for the service.
Exactly this. I would be entirely supportive of a model where a social network (not social media) was established with modest annual fees with the condition that the usual privacy violation and targeting and engagement hacking wasn't going to happen. But that's clearly not what this is.
i would pay for this.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#34Not a x/twitter user much these days (mostly quit a long time ago) but I’m happy when companies put a minor barrier up to stop botting. So meh, good idea I guess?
Bots and spammers are already using stolen credit card to pay for Premium. This isn't going to stop them.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#35I’ll never use this crap but $1 a year is smart. People will sign up for it because it’s nothing and that gives twitter a foot in the door for price hikes later.
A decade of App Store user behavior refusing to pay $0.99 one time for an app vs. using an app for free tells a different story.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#36I know people are down on the-social-networking-platform-formerly-known-as-twitter, and I have no skin in the game, I gave up on social networking about a decade ago, but I think this is the model to beat. Forever the FOSS world has said, "if you do not pay for the product, you are the product". Well, here is X trying to make a product you pay for. I do not know their new policy on tracking/ads/spying but even if the…
Mostly seconded. Another upside is this really does put a much larger cost to bots and problem accounts. Even $1 a year is a big deal if you've got an army of 5000 bot accounts (something pretty trivial in this environment). I'm all for things like Kagi doing this RIGHT and supposedly not selling all my data, but I've argued that companies like twitter charging for access is the path to a healthier environment. Oh an…
> Even $1 a year is a big deal if you've got an army of 5000 bot accounts (something pretty trivial in this environment).
I think this belief is highly misguided. Whoever is in the business of managing bot farms comprised of thousands of bots is certainly monetizing them for way more than $5000/month.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#37>Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.” With so many of these billionaires and CEOs it is becoming impossible to tell whether they are transparently lying or complete idiots. Just admit you need the revenue and you want people to put a card on file to lower the bar for future financial transactions. Charging for a service doesn't eliminate bots, it just shifts the financial break…
I love to mock Elon but even I am inclined to agree with him. It seems like the only other solution is something like Google's Web Environment Integrity thing, which scares me. The best/easiest solution is to make it more expensive for the botters to play the game,
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#38One fun thing about twitter was always the anonymous novelty accounts that people could fire off on a whim and see where they went. Most of the time they go nowhere but the viral ones can be great fun. Any barrier to entry, even $1, ensures that there's gonna be a lot less of these going forwards.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Well, here is X trying to make a product you pay for. No, this is an attempt to have it both ways. To do data collection / data brokerage and ALSO charge users for the service.
I think X should get credit for this move anyways. Them charging for access may make more people comfortable with the idea of paying for social networking, so that in the future more people will join when new social networks are made that don’t mine the data of the people
I donate monthly to my Mastodon instance, so it can afford to be an ad-free space. It doesn't take that much.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#40Tip: a good way to refer to this company is "Xitter". It concise and less awkward then most other conventions, and is easily recognizable. And if you pronounce the "X" with an "sh" you get a joke compatible with Elon Musk's humour style.