Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform
variety.com
Elon Musk may flip the switch to make X — the social network formerly known as Twitter — an entirely subscription-based platform. Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twi…

Elon Musk said he will charge all X/Twitter users a fee to be on the platform. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots," said Elon. I can’t believe that this is the only solution he can think of.

Dealing with bots would be Elon Musk’s responsibility, considering he’s the only one profiting significantly from X, not us. Elon Musk steals our data and censors each of our posts, now he even expects us to pay to clean up the mess he created.

Plus, the problems with X go beyond just bots. The algorithm and programming decisions are negatively impacting user experience and manipulating people’s minds.

We want a town square where everyone is free to have & voice an opinion. I do not believe we have to pay ”a small monthly payment” for such a place, especially in a country that should value these freedoms & suppressing ideas.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago
    • most data on WMF servers is media files, most of them photos; Wikimedia Commons has at this point nearly 100 million of those; probably still less than many social media sites, though
    • this is true, but many people on social media are also only lurkers
    • the WMF projects get lots of changes every minute, just look at the recent changes page
    • rglullis@communick.newsEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      The “rule” of social media is that users split 1%/9%/90% on creators (prolific posters), participants (comments and reshares content that might be interesting to them) and lurkers (don’t necessarily signup and only visit to read). That means that we have 200 times more “active” (0.05% vs 10%) users on social media relative to wikipedia. The operational costs and the staff required to moderate these sites should follow this proportion as well.