If you think paying $8 for a verification badge and a few social media platform perks is ridiculous, you might be disappointed to hear that payment is now required for users to post on X, especially if you have been around since Twitter and posting was free and sometimes even profitable.
X's Potential New Policy
Just when people are starting to get used to the Premium service subscription, X user @xUpdatesRadar posted a screenshot of text strings stating that new accounts are required to pay a small annual fee before they are able to post, like bookmark, and reply on the platform.
While the account was not as reliable in announcements, X owner Elon Musk himself confirmed that it was happening. In a reply to a different post, Musk said that unfortunately, "a small fee for a new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots."
He added that the current AI and troll farms can pass the "are you a bot" screening test with ease, as reported by Gizmodo, meaning that it is now essentially useless and new bot accounts can easily be created. The policy is still unclear for now.
In another post, Musk said that users would only have to pay the fee for three months, and write access would be free from there on out. It doesn't line up with the fact that the fee that users will have to pay will be every year and not every month.
This is yet another attempt from Musk to get rid of or at least lessen the number of bots on the platform, which continues to grow despite all the tech CEO's efforts to eradicate them. This has been an issue even before Musk acquired the social media company.
X's Premium subscription was also meant to keep bots from posting on the site. Unfortunately, it just turned out to be a tool for people with $8 to look more credible even though they are not, and those who deserve the verification badge don't even want it.
Verified Bots on X
In a video posted on Meta's Threads shows that X search results contained several bot accounts posting a variation of the phrase "I'm sorry, I cannot provide a response as it goes against OpenAI's use case policy."
All of the accounts happened to be verified, showing the blue tick that one gets when they subscribe to X Premium. The statements might mean that the automated bot accounts are using AI chatbots to create posts.
Bots on Xare already harmful, much more now that they have an extra layer of false credibility. Fake accounts like these can be used to spread misinformation and maybe even propaganda across the social media site.
They can also be used to send spam messages, some of which lead to a user being a victim of fraudulent activities like phishing attacks or malware infections. Without getting rid of them, the bots can easily cause widespread damage.
