Elon Musk Considers Charging 'Small Monthly Payment' To Use X

Billionaire Elon Musk is considering changing all users to use X, whether they have to blue checkmark or not.

The Tesla CEO is still trying to cut down on the number of bots on the platform and seems to believe that charging everyone a monthly subscription fee will reduce the number of spam accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter.

On Monday, the SpaceX CEO ventured that a "small monthly payment" might help reduce bots on X.

He made the during a livestreamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about artificial intelligence, in comments transcribed by CBS News.

"It's the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots," Musk said, explaining that X has 550 million monthly users that create 100 million to 200 million posts a day. That being said, it's unclear if bot posts are included in that number.

"We're actually going to come up with a lower tier pricing," he said. "This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defense against vast armies of bots."

This looks like it would be separate from X's premium subscription services, where it charges $8 a month for a blue checkmark and other features, like being able to edit a post and having prioritized rankings.

Musk has been trying to boost content creation on the platform for a while now in order to make X more profitable and attract more advertisers back to the platform.

On Sunday, Musk tweeted, "For those considering putting their work on the X platform, consider that Tucker Carlson’s show when he was on TV, had single digit million viewers. Strong by legacy news standards. Views for his episodes on X now exceed the population of the United States. Talk to Earth via X!"

Musk also tried to recruit Bill Maher back to X when he announced that "Real Time" would be making a return during the writer's strike.

In a statement posted on X, Bill Maher announced, “Real Time is coming back, unfortunately, sans writers or writing. It has been five months, and it is time to bring people back to work. The writers have important issues that I sympathize with, and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction, but they are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns. Despite some assistance from me, much of the staff is struggling mightily. We all were hopeful this would come to an end after Labor Day, but that day has come and gone, and there still seems to be nothing happening.”

“I love my writers, I am one of them, but I’m not prepared to lose an entire year and see so many below-the-line people suffer so much. I will honor the spirit of the strike by not doing a monologue, desk piece, New Rules or editorial, the written pieces that I am so proud of on Real Time,” he continued.

“And I’ll say it upfront to the audience: the show I will be doing without my writers will not be as good as our normal show, full stop. But the heart of the show is an off-the-cuff panel discussion that aims to cut through the bullshit and predictable partisanship, and that will continue,” he concluded. “The show will not disappoint.”

Although he, like Drew Barrymore, quickly walked back his decision to return until the Writer's Strike was over, it didnt stop Musk from trying to get Maher to put some original content up on X.

“Maybe worth posting some material on this platform,” he commented. “The reach is enormous.”

Earlier this month, Elon Musk ventured that he might file a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League after they allegedly accused X and Musk of anti-Semitism.

Earlier this month, Musk tweeted, "To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!"

He also tweeted, "To be super clear, I’m pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind."

"Since the acquisition, The @ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic," he continued. "Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!"

"If this continues, we will have no choice but to file a defamation suit against, ironically, the 'Anti-Defamation' League," he wrote. "If they lose the defamation suit, we will insist that they drop the the 'anti' part of their name, since obviously …"