X (formerly known as Twitter) has been struggling with revenue as well as user count ever since its rebranding and advertisers leaving the platform. However, it seems that the newly introduced premium subscriptions are not helping as the platform is considering more absurd means of making revenue.
According to a change in text strings spotted by X Updated Radar, the social network might start charging users for basic functions such as liking tweets, bookmarking, replying to tweets, and more. The change shows a new policy where users will be charged a small annual fee for these features. This policy was already effective in regions including the Philippines and New Zealand.
This change has been confirmed by X owner Elon Musk who has said that charging X users a small fee is the only way to deal with the surge of bots on the platform. He says that AI-powered bots and troll farms are easily able to bypass captcha tests.
However, such a move could easily backfire on Musk since it would drive away a lot of existing users and also stop new users from joining the platform. X also has a reputation for features backfiring under Elon Musk after which they are quickly removed.
It’s worth noting that Musk has consistently criticized the proliferation of bots on the X platform. He has gone to the extent of flagging their presence, attributing them to attempts to undermine his commitment to privatize the social media platform in 2022.