ELON MUSK HAS rocked the boat at Twitter/X once again by suggesting that he will soon charge all users of the platform.

The idea was first publicly mooted during a Twitter Spaces conversation with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which Musk said the primary purpose of the fee would be to weed out “bots” – automated users of the popular app.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” said Musk. “Because a bot costs a fraction of a penny — call it a tenth of a penny — but even if it has to pay a few dollars or something, the effective cost of bots is very high.”

While Musk didn’t specify the amount he’d expect users to pay, he said it would be a “small monthly payment.” As it stands, Twitter Blue users pay $8 a month, which entitles them to various additional functions, including the ability to bypass the platform’s 280 character-limit on Tweets, as well as video-size limits. 

The introduction of Twitter Blue was one of a raft of controversial changes Musk has made since he was forced to buy the company last year. Other such changes have included laying off over half of the company’s staff, temporarily limiting how many tweets users could see over a 24 hour period, and changing the name of the company from Twitter to X.

Musk’s latest off-the-cuff announcement was followed by a significant surge in users over at Twitter’s rival Bluesky.

Bluesky is backed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who sits on the board of directors for the new company (though its CEO is Jay Graber). The rival micro-blogging site had a record day of sign-ups in the 24 hours that followed Musk’s announcement, adding 42,000 new users.

The interface of Bluesky is virtually identical to that of Twitter, though the timeline still can’t host video. It allows all users to edit tweets, functionality that is only available to paid users on Twitter. By and large, however, the format and functionality of the two websites are indistinguishable to the casual user.

As it stands, Bluesky is not open to users at large, and is instead slowly approving users who have applied for a free account. Those users are then furnished with one “Invite code” per week, which allows additional users to join. The latest figures put the site’s usership at somewhere in the region of 1,142,817, according to the website Bluesky Stats.

As it stands, the most popular Bluesky accounts are the official Bluesky account, popular Twitter user and internet comedian Dril, fantasy author Neil Gaiman, US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and official Bluesky page of The Washington Post.

Other celebrities who have set up shop on the platform include George Takei, Patton Oswalt and Stephen King. King has been a critic of Musk’s on Twitter, having challenged Musk on the original price point of $20 per month and leading him to bring the price down to $8. King still refused to pay for verification.

Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023

Questions persist over what Musk truly seeks to achieve at Twitter/X. Another recent, but largely unheralded, change in the interface of Twitter has hidden quote-tweets.

In Twitter culture, quote-tweets are often used as a form of what is called “dunking” – which, in the real world, we would call “making fun of.” If somebody tweets something foolish, typically users would elect to read the “Quote tweets” of the original tweet, which would usually comprise many other tweets making jokes at the original users expense.

This function has now been hidden alongside a raft of other options, under the heading “View post engagements”. This change has once again changed the core functionality of the site for many users, making it more complicated to use.

In a tweet of his own earlier this month, Musk said that the site would also be doing away with the Block button, a vital tool for users who wish to escape abuse and harassment – as well as a standard tool on any modern-day social media that allows users some degree of control over who they interact with.

Moves like this, including the prioritisation of blue tick accounts (accounts who have paid for Twitter Blue) when reading the replies to tweets, will likely have lay Twitter using asking why they should pay for a product that has so drastically transformed from the one they signed up for.