https://www.axios.com/2023/09/19/musk-x-twitter-charge-all-users-monthly-subscription-fees#

Elon Musk said Monday he's moving to require all users to pay a monthly fee to use his social media site X, previously called Twitter.

Why it matters: The comments, which he made during a live-streamed event on X with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, come as the company struggles to regain trust with advertisers.

• Musk said earlier this month that Twitter's U.S. ad revenue was down 60%. He has blamed the company's ad challenges on civil rights and consumer groups putting pressure on big brands.

Driving the news: During the live conversation, Netanyahu brought up the challenge of preventing large armies of bots that amplify hate speech.

• Musk replied: "The single-most important reason we're moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system is it's the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots."
• Musk said adding a subscription would make it much more difficult for bots to create accounts, because each bot would need to register a new credit card.
• He added that the company plans to come out with "a lower tier pricing," than what it currently charges for its X Premium subscribers, which is around $8 monthly.

Yes, but: Musk has often teased new products or innovations, only to change course later down the line.

I wonder if maybe this is all bait. I mean, by now he must have realized he made a mistake buying Twitter, right? So maybe this is a signal to whoever he thinks might by him out that he's going to generate some new revenue streams here as bait. Sort of like the couple who had two kids, with the younger kid now graduating from college. So the younger kid comes home one evening, says she got her first raise at the job, and is looking for her own apartment.

So with tears and laughter, hope and joy, she moves out. The parents help her move. And on the way home they start talking about how now the house is too big for them and make plans to sell it and move to a smaller place. But, before they put it up for sale, they make some improvements to boost up the price.

Is that what Musk might be doing here?

Go for it, Elon.  That's what it will take to drive the legitimate accounts to Threads and leave only the Batshits on Twitter.  Right now there are still a lot of holdouts who have spent so much time and effort building their accounts that they, understandably, don't want to abandon it, but most people will not pay to be there so if they want to get their message out, they're going to have to go elsewhere.

But Threads still needs a lot of work.  You need to be able to click on a topic, not just an account.

Elon is a sick person.  Keep that in mind whenever you consider anything he does or says.  Twitter was a nice place to be - the site worked smoothly and there was reasonable regulation to keep the vermin under control.

But Elon *wanted* the vermin because he agreed with them, and it didn't matter if 99.9% of the users don't want to have Nazis on their feed.  He did and he had the cash to shape the place to be a reflection of his own sickness.  

As for fixing up the place, I don't think he really cares.  He doesn't look beyond the noise and if a lot of people are saying (and liking) the filth inside his own mind, that's good enough for him.  Free Speech was the excuse, but Twitter has become a bigger megaphone for the crazies than Truth Social and the rest of the old-school social media sites.  That's a huge win for him, because when you have more money than God, all that's left is the illusion of everybody adoring you.

Twitter is now massively devalued because advertisers can see the state of the place and don't want to invest in advertising, or even being on there at all.  And social media is all about advertising.  Look at the advertisements now compared to before Musk took over.  Twitter is in a spiral and so long as the place is mainly known for being an outlet for hate and stupidity, it's just going to get worse, and value will continue to fall.  And all the blue checkmarks in the world won't change that.

If he charges a monthly subscription cost- it would incentivize Threads to buy out more programmers to turn Threads into a free Twitter clone.