Elon Musk’s X is piloting a market-specific pricing initiative that will require new, unverified accounts in New Zealand and the Philippines to sign up for a $1 annual subscription in order to post and interact on the site.
The new “Not A Bot” subscription method is billionaire Musk’s latest way of nudging users toward paying for the platform, following X’s premium blue checkmark offering, which has pricing starting at $8 a month. That method has so far struggled to attract paying users.
The “new test” currently only affects new users in the two markets, according to X, and is a way to “bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity,” a post shared by the company said. “It is not a profit driver.”