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Elon Musk to charge for X.com access · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey everybody, you're back to the Elon Musk podcast.
• 0:03
  This is a show where we discuss
• 0:04
  the critical crossroads, the ShapeSpaceX, Tesla, X, the
• 0:08
  Boring Company, and Neuralink. And
• 0:10
  I'm your host, Will Walden. One
• 0:12
  more thing before we start. Google
• 0:14
  Podcasts is being discontinued by Google. So
• 0:18
  if you want to continue getting episodes of the
• 0:21
  Elon Musk podcast, please check us out over at
• 0:24
  YouTube Music. Search us out over there, and
• 0:27
  that's where you'll be able to find our podcast through
• 0:31
  Google products. Thank you so much for
• 0:33
  understanding. I had no control over this.
• 0:35
  Google pulled the Google Podcast
• 0:36
  app off of Android, and I want to let you know where
• 0:40
  to continue finding the show. Over
• 0:42
  at YouTube Music, search for Elon Musk podcast. Let
• 0:45
  me ask you a question. Would
• 0:47
  you pay to be part of a social media network? More
• 0:53
  importantly, would you pay to be a user on Elon
• 0:57
  Musk's x .com? So Elon Musk has just
• 1:02
  announced a plan to charge new users on the social
• 1:04
  media platform x, formerly known as Twitter, of
• 1:07
  course, a fee to post content. Would
• 1:11
  you pay for that? That's the question. This
• 1:14
  aims to address the ongoing issue about accounts that
• 1:16
  plague the platform. Musk believes that imposing a
• 1:18
  small fee on new users is essential for the future.
• 1:21
  For combating the influx of
• 1:23
  these fake accounts. Now, since acquiring Twitter,
• 1:27
  though, in 2022, Musk has repeatedly floated the idea
• 1:30
  of a user fee. He suggests that such a fee
• 1:33
  could effectively deter the creation of spam accounts
• 1:36
  driven by artificial intelligence and coordinating
• 1:39
  with troll farms, which can easily bypass traditional
• 1:42
  security measures such as CAPTCHA. Now,
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  as part of an experimental policy implemented in
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  October of 2023, x began charging new unverified
• 1:53
  users in New Zealand and the Philippines an annual
• 1:56
  fee of $1. Now, this fee enabled these
• 2:00
  users to engage fully with the platform, allowing them
• 2:03
  to post and interact with other content, which was
• 2:06
  otherwise restricted. Now, the issue of bots on x
• 2:09
  has been a persistent challenge, one that Elon
• 2:11
  Musk has vowed to conquer even before finalizing his
• 2:14
  purchase of the platform. His
• 2:16
  strategy has involved various initiatives aimed at
• 2:18
  reducing these unwanted accounts, which not only
• 2:22
  distort user engagement metrics, but also compromise
• 2:24
  the overall user experience. On
• 2:27
  April 15 of this year, attention was drawn to a
• 2:30
  change in x's policy that indicated a potential
• 2:33
  expansion of the annual user fee to additional
• 2:37
  countries. This update was first spotted by
• 2:39
  an automated tracking account on x and was later
• 2:42
  confirmed by Elon Musk in a series of posts. Musk
• 2:45
  said, unfortunately, a small fee for new user right
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  access is the only way to curb the relentless
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  onslaught of bots. Current AI and troll farms can
• 2:56
  pass the quote, are you a bot test with ease? Now,
• 3:00
  he shows that he's using some rationale for the
• 3:04
  policy shift, highlighting the ineffectiveness of
• 3:07
  conventional security measures against
• 3:09
  sophisticated automated AI systems. Now,
• 3:13
  despite the introduction of a user fee, Musk clarified
• 3:16
  that new users would not be indefinitely bound to
• 3:19
  this fee. You mentioned that after an
• 3:20
  initial three months, new users would gain full
• 3:22
  access to the platform without any payment, thus
• 3:25
  providing a balance between initial security measures
• 3:28
  and eventual user freedom. Now,
• 3:31
  let me ask you a question. If
• 3:34
  the bots are so powerful that they can bypass
• 3:36
  everything $1 fee doesn't seem like a lot if you
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  can gain $1 ,000 $10 ,000 $100 ,000 from using the
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  platform with your bot. Of course, on the black
• 3:50
  market, on the gray market, there are credit cards that
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  are stolen and possibility that they could use those
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  credit cards with their bots to use their influence
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  to make more money than $1 on the platform per year.
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  The introduction of fees for
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  new users coincides with broader efforts by X to
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  cleanse the platform of spam and bots accounts,
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  though. Earlier in the month, X initiated
• 4:14
  a major purge aimed at reducing these accounts,
• 4:17
  though the impact on the platform's bot population
• 4:20
  remains to be seen. There's no data out there yet from
• 4:23
  Elon Musk or from X. Now, Musk's approach to managing
• 4:27
  X also involves leveraging the platform's data for his
• 4:30
  other ventures. For instance, his AI company, X
• 4:33
  AI utilizes public posts from X to train his
• 4:36
  machine learning algorithms. This
• 4:38
  integration shows that Elon is using his broader vision
• 4:42
  and all of his companies combined to make X AI
• 4:45
  better. But if there are bot accounts
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  on X, he's not getting clean data for his AI
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  models. And that's going to be a huge
• 4:54
  problem in the future. Now, X's strategy to monetize
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  and also, let's say, enhance user engagement
• 5:01
  includes making its advanced chatbot grok available to
• 5:05
  premium users. And like I said, if that's
• 5:07
  trained on bot information, there's no real upside to
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  it. Because if there's millions of
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  bots, bot accounts compared to human accounts, it's
• 5:18
  going to be a tough go for grok at this point.
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  Now, grok used to be offered at
• 5:24
  a higher subscription tier, and it's now more
• 5:26
  accessible, potentially increasing its use and
• 5:28
  relevance within the user base. Now,
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  the financial aspect of the changes is significant. X
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  has been facing financial challenges with a reported
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  71 % drop in its value since Musk's takeover. The
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  introduction of a posting fee could provide a new
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  revenue stream at a time when the platform has
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  experienced significant advertising revenue losses.
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  Now, the decline in advertising
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  dollars was particularly stark following a backlash
• 5:52
  from advertisers over content moderation issues.
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  Companies like Comcast, Apple, and
• 5:58
  the Walt Disney Company withdrew their ads after a
• 6:01
  report service of ads appearing next to
• 6:03
  inappropriate content, including pro Nazi and hate
• 6:07
  speech. Now, Musk's direct responses to
• 6:10
  advertisers concerns have been controversial. In
• 6:13
  an interview, he bluntly criticized those withdrawing
• 6:15
  their advertising from X, which reflects his
• 6:17
  unconventional approach to business and public
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  relations. In response to the ongoing
• 6:23
  challenges with brand safety, though, third party
• 6:25
  firms like double verify have been involved in
• 6:27
  assessing the suitability of content on X for
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  advertisers. There have been discrepancies in
• 6:32
  these assessments indicating ongoing issues with
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  maintaining a brand safe environment. The
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  bot problem at X is not just a nuisance, but it's
• 6:41
  a huge operational challenge impacting everything from
• 6:44
  user experience to advertising trust and
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  revenue. And Musk's decision to impose a
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  posting fee on new users is a strategic move to
• 6:52
  mitigate these issues, albeit we don't know how
• 6:56
  effective this is going to be. And
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  neither does Elon at this point, could drive some
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  users away. I know to post on X. There's
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  no reason for me to pay a dollar for that. I'll
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  just move to a different platform. Most
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  people think the same way. And
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  these platforms have been historically free. And
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  we can post whatever we want whenever we want to
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  Facebook, even threads now, all of these platforms,
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  Instagram, YouTube, Spotify for podcasters where we
• 7:25
  post this podcast, everything's free to post.
• 7:28
  Why would I pay even a dollar
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  to be able to post on this platform? Now
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  this policy change has sparked a variety of
• 7:35
  reactions like mine right there. And
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  I would love to hear what you say about it. Because
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  if you're a user of X, you should be concerned
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  about this. Some view the fee as a
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  necessary evil, though, and I totally understand that.
• 7:48
  If there are hundreds of
• 7:50
  millions of bots running around doing malicious
• 7:52
  things, putting a barrier to entry in front of them
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  is one of the best ways to mitigate this. Now,
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  these the quality of interactions on X, while
• 8:04
  others are concerned about the potential barrier it
• 8:07
  creates for new users. I can understand that too.
• 8:11
  Maybe you don't have a dollar to
• 8:14
  interact with these platforms, maybe you're in
• 8:15
  a financial situation, maybe you're in a different
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  country than the United States, and you don't make
• 8:20
  a lot of money, you don't make a dollar that you can
• 8:23
  put towards social media. So
• 8:25
  I can understand that too. And
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  you'd probably move platforms like I was
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  talking about before, move over to threads or just
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  move to Instagram or some other platform Facebook,
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  etc. So you could post your
• 8:36
  content. And that's understandable. And
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  as X continues to evolve under Musk's leadership, the
• 8:43
  effectiveness of this new fee system in combating
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  bots will be important all over stakeholders from users
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  to advertisers will be watching closely to see
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  what happens with his imposed $1 fee for X.