The South African billionaire hopes to counter the bots proliferating on Twitter by requiring all users to pay “a few dollars” to join.
Published on 09/19/2023 10:31 Updated on 09/19/2023 11:53
Reading time: 1 min
Money to fight robots? The social network “a small monthly payment” for all users, its owner, Elon Musk, declared on Monday, September 18. The businessman thus hopes to fight against the proliferation of accounts, managed by computer programs and not by humans, that can be used to artificially amplify political or hate messages.
The billionaire raised this possibility during an interview, broadcast on his platform, with the Israeli prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu raised the issue of online anti-Semitism and how the network could “prevent the use of robots to reproduce and amplify it”. Elon Musk responded that the company “I was moving towards a small monthly payment for the use of System.
“It’s the only way I can think of to fight huge armies of robots.”
Elon Musk, owner of X (ex-Twitter)
in
“A robot costs a fraction of a cent, call it a tenth of a cent, but if someone has to pay even a few dollars, a smaller amount, the effective cost of robots is very high. And then you also need to have a new method payment every time you get a new bot.”he justified.
In July, Elon Musk said the platform had lost about half of its advertising revenue since its acquisition in October 2022. Its new owner has already made numerous changes, including employee layoffs, a name and logo change, the implementation of a paid option. , the removal of content moderation and the reinstatement of previously banned accounts.
