- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Elon Musk said he will charge all X/Twitter users a fee to be on the platform. He suggested that such a change would be necessary to deal with the problem of bots on the platform.
“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots," said Elon. I can’t believe that this is the only solution he can think of.
Dealing with bots would be Elon Musk’s responsibility, considering he’s the only one profiting significantly from X, not us. Elon Musk steals our data and censors each of our posts, now he even expects us to pay to clean up the mess he created.
Plus, the problems with X go beyond just bots. The algorithm and programming decisions are negatively impacting user experience and manipulating people’s minds.
We want a town square where everyone is free to have & voice an opinion. I do not believe we have to pay ”a small monthly payment” for such a place, especially in a country that should value these freedoms & suppressing ideas.
I mean it had repeatedly lost money for years, I honestly don’t think anything could have said it. I am not at all defending Musk, I just think the platform was doomed with our without him.
Twitter was not in danger of going bankrupt before. They are now due to Musk’s actions and financial setup. They did actually make decent profits (over $1B) in 2019 and 2018. The previous organization could have made modest cuts and improved efficiency to become profitable… also they were paying good salaries to over 8,000 people, and more advertisers and users were benefiting from the platform than are now. Musk’s destruction of the company was entirely unnecessary.