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X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

bbc.co.uk

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Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#31

Post by greggsy »

mg wrote: post #26

They charge for "the ability to tweet, retweet, like posts and reply to posts." It will be very interesting to see how this turns out. Obviously, there is no value in the ability to publish your thoughts. You can do that for free on an ever growing number of platforms. But Musk seems to bet on a private attention economy. Where even private individuals are willing to pay for attention. Not only businesses. Has this b…

This is really just a way to get your CC authorised to make transactions. It’s a nothing cost, but it exponentially increases he likelihood of someone buying something through the platform, or upgrading to a new feature set.

IMO, this will fail.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#32

Post by godzillabrennus »

raverbashing wrote: post #19
prepend wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the $1, it’s the identity linked to the charge. So now they can be blocked as well as traced back to the funding account. I once was in a charity sponsored therapy group and they had a $10 fee. I was annoyed as this was a pretty wealthy organization and the fee seemed discriminatory, or at least a hassle. I learned that it was just there to validate each participant. So I think this is just a filter to help…

Plenty of bots are paying the 5$ verified account It's a non-issue And of course a lot of them have the same X logo or Elon's picture, because His Xcellence probably fired the thinking heads dealing with spam

I’m surprised he hasn’t asked his fanboys to volunteer to moderate. Reddit has volunteer moderation.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#33

Post by threeseed »

tbabej wrote: post #22
hliyan wrote: post #4

I worry that this may paradoxically increase bots, because now the price of legitimacy is $1 per year. Bot farms and shills will do the math.

However, the rate-limiting factor might not be the cost, but the availability of unique credit card details.

You can buy pre-paid Visa and Mastercard debit cards from many retailers.

Availability of cards isn't going to be an issue.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#34

Post by lapcat »

threeseed wrote: post #21

This has nothing to do with bots. It's all about getting everyone to provide their credit card details for future revenue streams eg. micro-transactions. And also to give them a competitive advantage in the ad space e.g. allowing companies to target you based on your real life identity.

Except the plan will never work for mobile users who sign up via the App Store or Google Play Store.

"According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Musk’s push to sign-up subscribers was very much intertwined with his quest to build an “everything app,” and Musk grew angry when he learned Apple doesn’t share credit card details of those who sign up with their iPhones." https://www.engadget.com/x-is-starting-to-charge-new-users-1...

Of course every iOS developer already knew this, including members of his own engineering staff, which just goes to show how insulated and out of touch with reality the guy is.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#35

Post by Forgeties79 »

I have no evidence to back this up, but I imagine a lot of people are like me and just keep the app on their phone or whatever for when the occasional person sends them something or they read a post on a forum that makes them need to actually browse Twitter.

I imagine a lot of people like me are not even going to remotely consider to pay a dollar to have that ability. It’s not nearly important enough or integral to our daily lives.

This does make me curious though. Could someone pay a dollar to have an account that dozens of people can access until it’s tapped each month or day or whatever the limit is? Basically create the Netflix account sharing problem for Musk. Or mirror the content out forcing a constant whack a mole?

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#36

Post by inversetelecine »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #32
raverbashing wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of bots are paying the 5$ verified account It's a non-issue And of course a lot of them have the same X logo or Elon's picture, because His Xcellence probably fired the thinking heads dealing with spam

I’m surprised he hasn’t asked his fanboys to volunteer to moderate. Reddit has volunteer moderation.

And Reddit just got done crapping all over them, and they're still there working for free. I think X will be ok.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#37

Post by Ensorceled »

throwaway2990 wrote: post #3
Akcium wrote: post #2

I wonder, why they cannot just check your card, instead of charging $1? It's not much and I'm ready to pay if it helps fighting bots. But at the same time I noticed that before Elon took over Twitter, there were less bots (or it at least seemed so). Will it help - that's the question

Hahahhaha there’s less bots now than before Elon took over. Now instead of reply bots tho I get like bots.

There are definitely more bots in the replies to the people I follow (a dwindling number as they are all switching focus to bluesky, threads and their own email).

And many have the $8 checks so ... $1 a year is going to very little to the bot population.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#38

Post by pain_perdu »

threeseed wrote: post #33
tbabej wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the rate-limiting factor might not be the cost, but the availability of unique credit card details.

You can buy pre-paid Visa and Mastercard debit cards from many retailers. Availability of cards isn't going to be an issue.

It's trivial to prevent this category of card from being accepted. Many similar services already block pre-paid cards.

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#39

Post by johncolanduoni »

SXX wrote: post #23
prepend wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the $1, it’s the identity linked to the charge. So now they can be blocked as well as traced back to the funding account. I once was in a charity sponsored therapy group and they had a $10 fee. I was annoyed as this was a pretty wealthy organization and the fee seemed discriminatory, or at least a hassle. I learned that it was just there to validate each participant. So I think this is just a filter to help…

If X or Twitter or whatever accept payments via Apple Pay or Google Pay then there is absolutely no way to track anything. It's those services simply dont provide any information back to ex-Twitter. Also there is number of services like privacy.com that allow to hide real card details. And even if person is using real card then payment process have absolutely no way of knowing anything except those few last numbers o…

When performing this kind of verification, you can easily (and usually do) block cards from services like privacy.com by looking at BIN codes. I also don’t think spammers can get large numbers of unique DPANs from Apple and Google Pay since that involves a cryptographic exchange between your device and Apple/Google with involvement from your issuing bank.

Also most payment processors provide some sort of key that lets you identify if two users entered the same credit card number, for example Stripe[1]. So you’re not limited to last four digits for checking if two cards are the same.

[1]: https://stripe.com/docs/api/cards/object#card_object-fingerp...

Re: X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines

#40

Post by honeybadger1 »

threeseed wrote: post #27
andsoitis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People buy Tesla cars online.

It's been widely reported that many of the senior management at Tesla/SpaceX had to run interference to keep Musk away from day to day operations. X/Twitter is Musk unchained.

Honestly, why make shit up?
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