And they all go over to Bluesky now, co-invented by the former Twitter CEO, paid by investors, providing exactly one server. What could go wrong?
X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
91–100 of 181 posts
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#92What a bargain! For $1 a year (that YOU pay), Elon gets your credit card info or other. (where |you| is a much larger number than previous)
sig mentioned this. I just wanted to double down.
Elon just wants to be your bank. "Too bad" he scared away so many potential customers by politicizing the platform.
Narcissists really do want to have things "both ways"
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#93Charging $1/year for the ability to tweet and retweet should reduce spammers significantly. But don't journalists in oppressive regimes (e.g. Venezuela, China, Russia, Myanmar, Arab Spring) use twitter to share information? They could previously share information with nothing more than an internet connection, but now they'd be required to enter payment info; what does that do for their anonymity? If the idea is to im…
> But don't journalists in oppressive regimes (e.g. Venezuela, China, Russia, Myanmar, Arab Spring) use twitter to share information? They could previously share information with nothing more than an internet connection, but now they'd be required to enter payment info; what does that do for their anonymity?
Considering how supportive Elon is of oppressive governments, I imagine he views this as a side benefit.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is going to kill engagement. Maybe! The people who are still left must really like Twitter. I think charging a token amount to limit who can post from a Sybil attack mitigation perspective might actually be reasonable, and it’s exciting that someone who doesn’t care if they lose is willing to perform the experiment. If you’re not willing to pay at least a dollar to post, maybe your content doesn’t have any val…
Yes, the people remaining are addicted to/like Twitter. But this is the equivalent of imposing a sin tax on it and it will cost Twitter engagement like sin taxes lower alcohol or smoking. It will probably lose them even more money as their primary income is ads and lower engagement will drive advertising incoming even lower. Like all of new X/Twitter's changes, it doesn't seem to have any foresight or insight into th…
> Yes, the people remaining are addicted to/like Twitter.
I remain because I still follow a lot of people on Twitter (news/tech/journos).
There is not one single place that still has a majority of them apart from twitter.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's ironic. Paying for access to content at least makes logical sense, paying for the privilege to provide content to a platform is ridiculous.
Servers cost money. Bandwidth costs money. And pre-X Twitter was bleeding money. In the old days the grey beards called this computing model time sharing. 30 years ago people gladly paid AOL and CompuServe for their chat tools. How is this any different?
> And pre-X Twitter was bleeding money.
It had been profitable, shortly before covid. They could have had layoffs and been there again if not for the baggage that came with the acquisition. The debt, the exodus of advertisers, the general worsening.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#96When he made the purchase I disagreed with people that it was a bad business decision because at the time revenue was approx 6 billion and if they could lower operating costs while increasing revenue it would actually make a ton of sense. I've sinced changed my mind.
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Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#97>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…
>With so many of these billionaires and CEOs it is becoming impossible to tell whether they are transparently lying or complete idiots.
Why not both?
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 Won’t that just make people get used to paying and having their data sold? Why would future companies not follow that same model?
> Why would future companies not follow that same model? Because some companies are happy to be profitable without having to squeeze out ever last cent possible of their customers. When enough people are willing to pay for social media, someone will realize that there is room to build a business that doesn’t abuse its users and they will have enough money to run it.
Then those happy companies get sold to people that _do_ want to squeeze out the last cent possible of their customers. And then they will start collecting their user's data and do nefarious things with it
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#99Charging $1/year for the ability to tweet and retweet should reduce spammers significantly. But don't journalists in oppressive regimes (e.g. Venezuela, China, Russia, Myanmar, Arab Spring) use twitter to share information? They could previously share information with nothing more than an internet connection, but now they'd be required to enter payment info; what does that do for their anonymity? If the idea is to im…
somewhat free speech.
Re: X/Twitter will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features
#100I’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.
In what world does raising the price from free to $1 lower the barrier for signing up?
It massively raises the barrier for signing up, but drastically reduces the barriers to squeeze more money out of those that do down the line.