Conventional wisdom, based on the first years of the Social Media revolution, suggests making everyone pay to participate in social media is suicidal. Since there’s no inelastic demand for social media services (or Musk known something we don’t know), only inelastic costs (Twitter/X has not been exactly profitable since well before Musk bought it), social media history is about to be written once again and 160 characters will not be enough to describe it. Of course, we must not forget Musk has promised to remove “Block” feature and there’s no blocking the fact he hasn’t done it (yet).
Shortly after acquiring Twitter in October 2022, Elon Musk began exploring the concept of placing the entire platform behind a paywall as a means of addressing the issue of bot accounts. Since then, he has consistently promoted the platform’s subscription service and rebranded Twitter as “X,” while Twitter Blue was renamed to “X Premium.”
On September 18, 2023, Elon Musk proposed a solution to tackle the platform’s bot-related challenges. Presently, the $8 X Premium subscription offers users the ability to edit their posts, create posts exceeding 280 characters, and grants them a verification badge next to their name, along with a range of other features.
