Elon Musk trials $1 subscription signup fee for new X users in New Zealand, Philippines

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• X, formerly known as Twitter, is testing a signup model wherein new users will have to either pay to become a verified enterprise account, opt into an X premium subscription, or pay a $1 annual fee to prove they’re not a bot. The trial, which began on Oct. 17, is currently only applicable to new users in New Zealand and the Philippines.  The experiment, according to a post on X’s help center, is called “Not A Bot.” As its name implies, its purpose is reportedly to deter bot activity on the app by requiring all users (who are included in the test) to verify their phone number and payment method. Per the help center post:

• “As of October 17th, 2023 we’ve started testing ‘Not A Bot’, a new subscription method for new users in two countries. This new test was developed to bolster our already significant efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity.” The post goes on to state that “new users” who pay the $1 subscription fee “will be able to perform certain actions on the web version of the platform: post content, Like posts, Reply, Repost and Quote other accounts’ posts, Bookmark posts.” Those who don’t pay the fee and opt out of subscribing “will only be able to take ‘read only’ actions, such as: Read posts, Watch videos, and Follow accounts.”

• t’s unclear at this time exactly how X intends to determine the effectiveness of the “Not A Bot” trial. Cointelegraph’s request for commentary from the company solicited an immediate response of “busy now, please check back later.”  Previous research on the nature of social media “bots” has revealed the term to be nebulous. According to one study, it isn’t always obvious whether accounts generating bot-like behavior are, in fact, bots. There’s also the consideration that bots, and their behavior, are likely to become far more sophisticated in light of the ongoing large language model-driven revolution in consumer-facing artificial intelligence chatbot technology.