X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features • Hacker News Board

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#171

Post by userinanother » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #110

rewmie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That $5,000/mo is 5,000 payment transactions that need to come from somewhere. People running illegal or shady activities are not super fond of leaving their fingerprints all over payment gateways (this is the entire reason cryptocurrencies exist). Even if they're not doing anything illegal, they are certainly violating the TOS and tracking down fresh credit cards each time one of their accounts gets banned presents…

Let me introduce you to privacy.com virtual card. Or slash, or stripe, or really any of the virtual cards even from Amex and citi. No issue generating 1000s of new cards and numbers. Phones numbers are a bit more expensive but still under 35c a text verification.

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#172

Post by userinanother » Wed, Oct 18, 2023, 11:30 PM UTC

earthnail wrote: post #128

slg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At $1/year, this isn’t a revenue play because after card and/or platform fees - it won’t amount to much at all. It isn't purely about the $1 per year revenue. It is about having a customer credit card on file which reduces friction for every future situation in which the user is charged which increases future revenue.

A customer credit card is yet another barrier for bots. Since the finance industry is so strictly regulated, you can imagine that it'll actually be quite hard to get fresh credit cards for your bots at scale.

It’s not there are services they are available to everyone they aren’t even illegal or grey market. Amex and citi offer em

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#173

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #127

ElongatedMusket wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely had a bot problem before! What Twitter were you using?

> never had this much of a bot problem ... How did you read this as meaning it never had a bot problem? They're claiming that it had _less_ of a bot problem, which certainly _feels_ true.

Does the difference matter, when the place was completely infested already before?

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#174

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:59 AM UTC

pixxel wrote: post #122

ElongatedMusket wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely had a bot problem before! What Twitter were you using?

Dismiss comments that start with ‘Nah.’

I've never seen a good quality comment starting with "Nah.", where did it come from and why did it become viral?

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#175

Post by throwaway4aday » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 12:10 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #166

throwaway4aday wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if it's identified as a bot then it won't. This change in policy seems to be a move away from that kind of revenue generation. If you're happy with MAU from bots then why bother to identify them?

> if it's identified as a bot then it won't If Twitter could identify bots, then they wouldn't have this problem at all. This whole issue exists because they can't identify bots to any degree of accuracy. So now they're cedeing the situation and simply trying to monetize it.

no idea where you're getting that idea from but it's wrong, that is not how you generate revenue from bot accounts if that was the goal

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#176

Post by skyyler » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

pard68 wrote: post #71

skyyler wrote: post #10

Earlier 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.

Please read my conclusion where I commented on this exact point.

Your conclusion where you said this was a good thing? I did read it; I thought it was a shit take, so I commented.

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#177

Post by hcurtiss » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 2:44 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #167

hcurtiss wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon is solving a revenue problem with $1/user/year? That will assuredly cost some real users too? Please. You have this exactly backwards.

On the contrary. Twitter's survival is entirely dependent on becoming profitable. Entirely. Revenue (and eventually, profits), is and should be, the primary goal. ---------- Without a doubt, this is "supposed to increase revenue". From my perspective: you are seemingly arguing that this will increase revenue by somehow improving the Twitter experience and growing the userbase. Unless... you somehow don't think revenu…

Yes, they have said explicitly they are working to improve the user experience. Likewise, they are working to assure their advertisers that the numbers they are showing them are real users. This has been a known issue since well before Musk's acquisition.

My point is that the $1/user is not solving a revenue problem by raising $1 times 10,000 bots, as you claim. It's designed to eliminate bots so that they recruit real users that advertisers value, and which also improves the user experience.

Musk hatred consumes too many.

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#178

Post by 3cats-in-a-coat » Thu, Oct 19, 2023, 8:12 PM UTC

93po wrote: post #149

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. He ruined the product in every way then said “pay”. There’s nothing to pay for anymore. Let it burn.

??? How is twitter any different from a casual user perspective?

Ruined verification, ruined home timeline algorithm, promotion of political nonsense throughout the platform, extremely bizarre bottom of the barrel scam ads replacing reputable advertisers, inscrutable links with no headlines, and proliferation of "engagement hustlers" who posts clickbait to get to our timelines at the hope of getting something from the revenue sharing program. Made worse by the fact moderation basically does not exist anymore. Including fake content about real events, like Ukraine and Palestine. Also banned third party clients, including their own Tweetdesk (replaced by a shitty webapp), frequent reliability issues. I mean I can go on all day.

The question is how come YOU do not know any of that? You must be way more casual user than me, I guess.

Twitter used to be a medium where I come for links to content from anyone I care about. Many I care about are gone from the platform or inactive. Many others I care about just do not show up on my timeline, because the timeline prioritizes garbage I don't care about. I keep clicking "Following" but it never sticks. Intentionally.

Twitter is only slightly better than 4chan right now. And getting worse by the minute.

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#179

Post by bccdee » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 5:38 AM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #173

rsynnott wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never had this much of a bot problem ... How did you read this as meaning it never had a bot problem? They're claiming that it had _less_ of a bot problem, which certainly _feels_ true.

Does the difference matter, when the place was completely infested already before?

It was never a problem for me before and it's a problem for me now. That difference matters immensely to my experience of the platform.

Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features

#180

Post by bccdee » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 5:41 AM UTC

raincole wrote: post #125

bccdee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Twitter never had this much of a bot problem before Elon bought it, which is a big clue as to what's actually gone wrong: He laid off all the moderators and all the staff who were training the automated bot detection algorithms. Extremely formulaic spam which would have been instantly flagged a couple years ago just piles up in my notifications.

> Twitter never had this much of a bot problem before Elon bought it Nah.

> Extremely formulaic spam which would have been instantly flagged a couple years ago just piles up in my notifications.

Yah.