Elon Musk: Tax on the „luxury" of posting and liking X? A safe utopia or dystopia?

Elon Musk is back with a new controversial idea: implementing a tax for users of the X platform (formerly Twitter). The stated objective: combating spam bots and disinformation. But is it a viable solution or just another blow that could accelerate the platform's decline?

Well...Let's take a closer look at Musk's plan

• 1 $ per year fee - A seemingly small amount, but one that would generate significant revenue from the approximately 550 million monthly users of the platform.

• The fight against bots - Musk hopes that paying to create new accounts will discourage spam and propaganda operations.

• Integration with other services - Musk wants to turn X into a complex platform, similar to WeChat, offering services for payments, shopping and more.

Yep still there are super significant risks. In general, an additional fee for a Web 2.0 social platform could discourage many users, causing them to abandon the platform, and resource-intensive spam operations could easily absorb the cost of the fee.

Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots.

Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2024

https://9to5mac.com/2024/04/15/musk-charge-new-x-users-fee/

Simple and quick - users like me for example....less active could be disproportionately deterred by the fee. That is, from my point of view the X platform by imposing a fee to post I could interpret it as a restriction of freedom of expression. Not that I could .... this is exactly what I think will happen - slowly, slowly the freedom of expression on the former Twitter will be fenced off.

However, to be in neutral thinking mode ..... in the end, the success of that platform will depend on how it will be implemented, on its effectiveness in combating spam and on the attractiveness of the integrated services. It remains to be seen whether this change will revitalize the X platform or simply accelerate its decline.

Elon Musk, in the past, has always criticized the advertising-based business model of social platforms. The hard phase, implementing a monthly fee, would counter this criticism and turn X into a model similar to that of the platforms it criticizes. Charging users to post online could pave the way for a new era of the Internet, where access to information and free expression become privileges accessible only to those who can pay....seems to be the height of irony.