Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, is to charge all users subscription fees

He's so bad at running Twitter I'm starting to think it's his goal to ruin the brand. Don't know what for but surely he can't be this dumb?

Let me guess. Paying a subscription will not mean the end of ads.

I have been wondering for a while what he would have to do to finally crash twitter, I think this may be it.

I'm convinced he's ruining Twitter on purpose. He's still pissed he was forced into buying it.

Haha, no one is gonna pay to use social media. I don't use Twitter but you would never get me to pay for absolute garbage brain rot. I'm already on lemmy for that and it's free.

I think it’s one of his best ideas he’s ever had. I fully support this move and everyone else should as well.

What a wonderful, genius, innovative idea. Such brilliance. I think he should also keep ads on there as well.

If all 330 MAUs paid this, Twitter would net gross $3.6bn/month.

Crucially, they absolutely will not.

The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.

Idiot manchild proudly breaks something he knows nothing about, complains when it doesn't work as expected, news at eleven.

Over on Mastodon: brace for impact!

what is this clickbait bullshit??? I've seen multiple articles yet the wording is always 'floated the idea', but from the headline you could infer it's an official announcement.

fuck modern 'journalism'

It's an interesting thought, but he misses the #1 problem with online subscriptions- sign-up friction.

If you could just push a button and instantly be charged something, an awful lot of people would do it.
But when you go from $0 to $0.01, you will lose 99% of people, because most people can't be bothered to fill out a form, put in their credit card number, etc. Even if the amount of money involved is absurdly small, it's not the price, it's the friction.

Now if he integrates the app with Apple Pay or Google Wallet that will help, a little. But only a little.

The movie about Twitter's downfall will be absolutely fascinating.

Well, if that doesn’t kill the site, I genuinely don’t know what will.

Oh boy, now I get to pay to give Elon my dumb thoughts. Sign me right the fuck up!

It’s surprising that in all these years, nobody came up with this innovation to make Twitter more profitable but in just a short time period, Musk was able to figure it out. Goes to show why he’s the richest man in the world!

Looks like Elon Musk and John Riccitiello are trying to see who can run their company into the ground the quickest.

I think it's bigger news that that fuck is meeting with that other fuck Netanyahu. What the fuck business do those two fascist scum have with each other?

Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.

Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.

Would be cool if he did. One last flurry of articles about Twitter folding and then nothing. That would be great.

Yep, this is the final nail in the coffin. Most people will just stop. Good job boosting the Mastodon community, Moron Musk.

Mastodon.World stock is increasing

Oh hell yeah

Twitter drama isn’t news anymore

When Elon realizes nobody wants to pay to listen to Elon, will he rollback the changes or start posting on Threads?

Well muskrat, you'd have to pay me to go back on Twitter so good luck with that.

I’ve managed to stay away from Twitter while it was free.

Pretty sure I’ll manage when it’s blocked behind the paper curtain.

In fact, they’d have to pay me to join. And with all the new paying subscriptions they’ll have, maybe they’ll have enough.

Long live mastodon. And bluesky too, when they finally open up and stop with the invite codes.

We all know he's too big of a pussy to actually do this. Stupid claim just to stay in the media

This has turned into such a mess. I bet he regrets buying twitter.

I hope that this really starts to be the downfall of Twitter/X.

But knowing how loyal Musk’s fanbase can be, I have a feeling many will be happy to pay.

Do it. Mastodon will be ready.

You gonna catch this one, Mozilla?

That's a great idea! Can't wait for the end of biweekly news about how Twitter is changing, since it will die immediately.

I never thought there was any point to using Twitter in the first place, but now really, why would anyone stay on there?

Legacy audiences for entertainers?

Who gives a shit

I knew he was going to run Twitter into the ground, but I'm impressed at the speed and efficiency of it.

He needs revenue and this is a high risk, medium reward way to get it if he sees no end in sight on the advertising front.

And it's not like there's no way to make a subscription model work online, the NYT is doing it well. Lots of substacks and patreons are doing it.

But it's essentially launching a new company, with all the risk that entails. Subscription model flatly does not work with the network effects necessary for Twitter.

A Twitter where everyone has to pay, will not be worth paying for.

Do it. The titans must die before the internet can blossom once more.

Right up front here, Musk is an absolute idiot, and wrong about almost everything. I am not defending him as a person, and I am not defending his specific plan here to have people pay monthly for their account.

However -- charging a small one-time fee for an actual account with the ability to post is a legitimate avenue to reduce bots. SomethingAwful forums have done this for a long time: an SA account is $10. Doing something like that (maybe not as high as $10), and grandfathering in existing accounts - that could work, because the main thrust would be using the fee as a bot-blocker.

Musk, however, just wants the money, and he's hiding that behind the idea of preventing bots with it.

Fine by me. Accelerates the process of putting that dumpster fire out of its misery.

Elon is an idiot who fcked around and found out with all his Twitter shenanigans, I enjoy watching him make a fool out of himself infront of the whole world now.

LoL

Poor Elon, the man is probably losing sleep over twitter, or x, or whatever the fuck he wants to call this far-right nazi sympathizing website

I am a hundred percent certain you could seriously damage twitter by seeing of the sprinklers(assuming they ate still installed) because there's no way musk's penny pinching didn't lead him to sell or not set up the special non conductive fire retardant

DEITY$ help anyone I know that starts paying for Twitter. I was ridicule them mercilessly.

$11 for iPhones. L M A O