New Zealand and the Philippines | New X users now have to pay for basic services
(Washington) Elon Musk’s X platform announced Tuesday that it has begun charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines for basic services such as posting messages.
The social network, which has been owned by the eccentric billionaire since last year, said in a statement that the change aims to “strengthen” the existing policy aimed at reducing spam (unwanted messages) as well as “manipulation of our platform and ‘bots’.” activity’.
New users from the Philippines and New Zealand will have to pay approximately US$0.75 and US$0.85 respectively each year to access basic network functions.
Those who refuse to pay these amounts will be able to access the platform’s “only” “reading” function, i.e. watching videos or following accounts.
The network adds that this is “to evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us fight bots and spammers on X, while balancing accessibility of the platform with a lower amount of fees.”
Users already registered in the two countries concerned are not affected by this measure.
Since his acquisition of Twitter at the end of October 2022 for $44 billion, Elon Musk has made a series of controversial changes within the teams and in the products offered.
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