Lads, I dislike Elon just as much as the next wasteof user, but this isn’t true.
People are just misinterpreting his comment. He just said that there may be a new tier of Twitter preminum that costs less.
Source: https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1703806204894498966 (this is the literal interview he did which people are saying he said this) Yes, the first quote on 34:40 seems to support @imadeanaccount’s claim, but if you go on (at about 35:30) he then seems to clarify he’s referring to a new, lower priced subscription.
Here is the quote:
… so pioritising posts written by by X premium subscribers, we’re actually gonna come out with a lower tier pricing so y’know, we’re wanting it to just be a small amount of money, that this is the (stumbles) it’s a longer discussion but in my view this is the only defense against vast armies of bots.
The reasoning that this proposed new lower tier of premium may happen is to combat bots, which was also mentioned in the original quote that people are alarmed over (people saying this quote is saying about putting twitter behind a paywall)
"The single most important reason that we are moving to having a small monthly payment for the use of the X system, is it is the only way I could think of to combat vast armies of bots,"
The reasonings correlating on both the quotes makes me believe he was originally talking about a lower, cheaper tier all along, and that he was just unclear.
you have to think about the meaning (of his previous statement). he says that for a bot to post tweets, it will need to pay money, in the hopes that they won't be able to pay, thus stopping bots from posting on Twitter.
this directly implies that ordinary twitter users (who will also have to verify their identity/that they're not a bot) will also be charged the "small" fee.