X to charge users a monthly fee, says Musk

X, the online platform formerly known as Twitter, will soon introduce a monthly fee for all users, its owner, Elon Musk, announced on Monday. The tech billionaire said the move was necessary to combat the problem of bots on the site, which can be used to spread hate speech and misinformation.

Musk made the announcement during a live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who raised the question of online anti-Semitism and how X could prevent the use of bots to amplify it.

Musk explained that bots are cheap and easy to create, but if they have to pay a few dollars every month, their effective cost would be very high. He also said that every time a bot creator wanted to make another bot, they would need another new payment method. He did not specify how much the monthly fee would be but described it as a “small amount of money.”