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

UrLogicFails@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 348 points –
Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform
variety.com

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.

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I know it is a popular sentiment that people should migrate to Mastodon, but I personally think people will migrate wherever the people they follow migrate to.

With this in mind, I suspect Bluesky will be the platform to usurp Twitter; but with Twitter chasing off all their users in the near future, it may go to whichever platform is readily open at the time.

I'm very curious to see if Bluesky or Spill open up when Twitter closes the door on its users. If not, Mastodon may have a shot at being the next large platform...

The biggest problem with Bluesky is it's owned by another musk.

He's not great, but that's an exaggeration

Until it isn't. The platform is still single-tracked through an unaccountable billionaire.

I wouldn't say the owner is anywhere near musk-like, however it is still centralized. The system seems to be setup to allow fediverse-like federation in the future, but right now the only instance is the official Bluesky instance.

Dorsey more of a proto-Musk IMO. He went off to an island to live with cocaine and guns. He only came back recently to create another social network because he hates Musk’s guts. (Edit: I guess I was wrong, and he doesn’t hate Musk)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure the guys fucking insane, but I also don’t think he’s as bad as musk or as hell-bent on destroying democracy. He’s just interested in making money to buy more cocaine and islands and guns.

Dorsey is a best pal of Musk's

Are you sure? I know they used to be super friends, but I thought they had a falling out.

Thick as thieves.

Hmm.. either they made up, or I’m thinking of something else. I’ll take your word for it.

Anyway, the rest of what I said stands. Dorsey may be bonkers (check out that Vice interview from a year or two ago), but he’s not even in the same league of evil bastards as Musk. He may be completely a self-interested billionaire, scumbag, but he’s not a literal fascist with Musk’s track record, nor is he actively stoking neo-nazi activity while personally interfering with an ongoing war in favor of our country’s greatest and longest-standing enemy.

I think you’re giving Jack Dorsey a bit too much credit by calling him another musk.

Edit: Although… he kinda was “Musk before Musk” if you know what I mean. Like I first said: proto-Musk.

Is bluesky up yet? I'd assume everyone will just go to bluesky anyway.

Yes, but it's invite-only. Either you join the wait-list and get lucky, or someone gives you an invite (members get an invite to hand out to friends every 10 days or so). Amusingly this has resulted in a large chunk of blüski being furry and LGBT, due to how tightly knit the communities are. I know a lot of the furry discord servers I've been in regularly have people openly offering invites, whereas most of the non-furry servers seem to be completely unaware of how active it is or that it even exists (my experience is that blüski feels way more active than Twitter due to it not giving preferential treatment to Elon shills; you're far more likely to have random people seeing your posts).

From what I can tell, it's still on the invite system; but I haven't been keeping a close eye on it. I figured if it opened up, I would hear about it online.

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