Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform

I’m not sure if this is technically Technology news, but I can remove this post if it’s in the wrong community

Archive link: http://archive.today/3XM6s

Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twitter during a wide-ranging conversation focused on AI that featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that it is the only way to eliminate the problem of bots, as reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.

Musk didn’t mention timing of his plan to charge X/Twitter users, nor did he say how much it would cost.

Musk, who also is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said X/Twitter ad sales have plunged 50% since he bought the company. “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk posted on July 15.

xtremeownage,

So, I am starting to really believe his goal is to just drive a stake into the heart of twitter.

Either that, or he is trying to prove a point regarding something.

I don’t think there is any possible way, he is so dumb as to make all of these horrible decisions regarding twitter… This has got to be destroying twitter by design, on purpose.

I mean, seriously… he has done literally everything that you SHOULDN’T do. Fire the majority of the company. Destroy over a decade worth of very good branding. Alienate all investors. Alienate the user base. Piss off the remaining users more. Drive away advertisers…

FFS, the dude has a company that sends rockets into space, and previously, the world’s premier electric car company… What in the hell is his odd obsession with choking the life out of twitter, that has been costing him money left and right due to absolutely horrible publicity.

Peafield,

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” - Hanlon’s razor

renard_roux,

Can’t… can’t it be both? 🤔

miracleorange,

Please remember that SpaceX and Tesla have entire teams dedicated to handling Elon and reversing his decisions. Twitter did not have the infrastructure required to handle the sheer level of stupid that is Elon Musk.

MayonnaiseArch,
@MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org avatar

He’s a stupid man. But he’s also sitting on mbs dick, so he does what daddy says

shaolin_shrimp,

There are some (extreme) suspicions on his intent: …medium.com/no-elon-and-jack-are-not-competitors-…

Honytawk,

If he wanted Twitter to fail, he could have just unplugged all the servers and be done with it.

No need for him to change the policies so much everyone would leave, break his internet persona, and then declare Xitter bankrupt.

No, I believe he bought Twitter in order to manipulate the US presidential election by spreading propaganda from what he considers a “left-wing bubble”. But because he has no idea how to run a social media, he is failing to keep it together and by now is throwing stuff against it to see what sticks.

briongloid,
@briongloid@aussie.zone avatar

He owes a lot of money to banks, etc, for the company.

Explicitly closing Twitter would make him liable for destroying other people’s equity. Accidentally destroying twitter while pretending to drastically fix it, while pretending it’s failing against his will and his taking measures to save it, is the only way to kill it without being on the hook for it.

FlowVoid,

Incompetence is not a legal defense.

Honytawk,

I doubt he won’t be on the hook for the billions he got as investment no matter how he destroys Twitter.

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Haven’t you heard the story about that one time when he literally unplugged a bunch of servers? He also had zero regards to the proper protocol for moving hardware like that.

Honytawk,

Yes, but he didn’t do that with every server sadly

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

It was a good start. Elon should pull that same stunt with all the data centers he owns.

Auzy,

He’s probably losing money on it… So, it makes sense for him to kill it, before he digs a deeper hole.

That being said, he’s an engineer who seriously got angry at cave divers when they told him his sub sucks.

And I’m willing to bet many of the crappy design decisions for Tesla are made by him too

So, possible he’s an idiot, but, equally possible, he’s trying to kill it in a subtle way which won’t instantly drive all traffic to a competitor

transistor,
@transistor@lemdro.id avatar

Please do it fast.

tiny_electron,

What about a fee for every X install like Unity?

highsight,

$0.20 for every view of your tweet!

Honytawk,

Sounds like a great idea!

I mean, not for Xitter, but for the internet as a whole it would be amazing!

marx2k,

I still have a Twitter account. Checking in to see who is still advertising.

“Knees over toes guy”… some personal trainer thing?

Google pixel with comments turned off

Some ethereum outfit…

Youtube advertising football stuff with comments turned off

Amazon music advertising s9me podcast

ESPN sport center

Shrug

sanols,

Yo knees over toes guy slaps, I’m a huge fan and have been since the pandemic.

I definitely fell victim to the marketing but goddamn if his workouts haven’t helped my knee pain!

renard_roux,

How can he slap?! 😫

In all seriousness, though, what’s the angle? Building musculature to support joints? Or is it some sort of weight lifting reference?

Thorny_Thicket,

Don’t quote me on this but I believe his thing is what the handle says; knees over toes. It used to be considered to be bad for your joints doing exercises such as deep squats for example, but his belief is that it’s the exact opposite. He used to have really bad knees himself, and couldn’t really play basketball like he wanted to, but by doing these exercises he was able to strenghten his knees to the point they no longer cause issues for him. The main exercise he’s recommending is pulling a sled backwards. He tells about Finnish lumberjacks who used to drag logs backwards like this and how they had super strong knees.

deft,

why does he look like that

itsonlygeorge,

You mean like an idiot who paid billions of dollars for a company only to ruin it in less than a year?

Uncle_Bagel,

He’s had a fair bit of cosmetic surgery over the years. Things like hair plugs to jaw fillers

Iwasondigg,

I fucking dare him to follow through. Please do it. Don’t wuss out Elon!

averyminya,

Should we all go make twitter accounts and say how great of an idea this is?

FleetingTit,
@FleetingTit@feddit.de avatar

Yes! Absolutely!

GreenMario,

He should totally do it and charge per post as well.

BeigeAgenda,
@BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

Use unitys model and charge per view, “Your post got 200k views, start paying up! 1 cent per view”

HappyMeatbag,
@HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org avatar

I want to charge Musk every time he makes another asshole announcement about running one of his companies into the ground. Just fuck off, dude.

Bizarroland,
@Bizarroland@kbin.social avatar

If you had a nickel for every time musk edged a promising platform closer to worthlessness and destruction you'd have a mother fucking shit ton of nickels.

Uniquitous,

Like… a cavalry charge? Infantry? Rhinocerii?

HappyMeatbag,
@HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org avatar

I had been thinking “charge” in the financial sense, but now that you mention it, a bunch of rhinos would be much more entertaining!

mojo,

I really hope this happens. It already was dying, but this would be the final nail in the coffin for the stubborn users who are still on there for some reason. Clearly Twitter Blue has been failing.

sculd,

Ok. This one might “finally” kill the platform because normal customer wouldn’t want to pay for access.

Uniquitous,

Anyone who hasn’t abandoned the platform by now deserves whatever they get.

FerrumFox,

On one hand, I’d love for it to finally die, but those toxic communities will simply move to a new site and do the same thing they did on Twitter. Like ants.

On the other hand, a lot of people have grown their business through Twitter and have relied on it. Most other sites don’t have the same functionality and large number of people that make it so easy like Twitter.

So I guess I’m on the fence about Twitter dying.

furrowsofar,

Frankly I do not understand Twitter. Never been a member. Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.

The people that seem to like it are those that want to be “the person” people follow or those that want to follow “the person”. Both are kind of offensive behaviors as far as I am concerned.

bermuda,

Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.

I mean, that was the original point of twitter. Jack Dorsey took Facebook’s status updates feature and made a whole website about it. You’d follow people you knew in real life as well as famous people you liked and then could see short updates about their life and their interests. Most of the very first tweets were just innocuous little updates. 50cent said he was in Turkey. Warren Buffet said he joined the app. A bunch of random non celebrities posted messages about what they were cooking that day.

Twitter effectively ran this concept into the ground when it 1) removed the character limit (it was originally 140 chars), and 2) added thread reply features.

furrowsofar,

The amazing thing to me is that people actually care about that. Obviously a lot of people do. I cannot fathom it. It is just not me. Kind of confirms I made a good choice by ignoring Twitter.

bermuda,

Okay.

artaxadepressedhorse,
@artaxadepressedhorse@lemmyngs.social avatar

It’s a prisoner’s dilemma thing. People have had ample time and opportunity to move to mastodon, but as you say Twitter is still where the bulk of eyeballs are, but that only remains true if everyone’s too afraid to leave it.

beefcat,
@beefcat@beehaw.org avatar

A new platform has the potential for better moderation and better design to keep those unsavory elements in check. Since Musk has made himself the enemy, the only path forward is for Twitter to die. Nothing good will come from it as long as he is in charge.

macrocephalic,

I don't use Xitter, what functionality does it have that's not stupidly easy to implement? As far as I can tell the only thing that Xitter has is a userbase - and when they drive them away they'll have nothing [but debt].

ashtrix,

Do it! Do it!

macrocephalic,

Rip the bandaid off! Get this shit closed down and be done with it.

Rockyrikoko,

Xitter, pronounced shitter

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