Last October, X/Twitter started charging a $1 annual fee to new accounts before they could post on the platform, but only in New Zealand and the Philippines. The change was a part of a new program called Not a Bot, with the goal to bolster X’s efforts to “reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity.”
Now, it appears that this program is expanding to all markets.
https://twitter.com/xUpdatesRadar/status/1779925745562751210″ target=”_blank” title=”(opens in a new window)” rel=”noopener
“The onslaught of fake accounts also uses up the available namespace, so many good handles are taken as a result,” he added in a subsequent tweet.
It’s unclear how big the fee will be, but in the New Zealand and the Philippines kontrol it was set to $1, which amounted to $1.43 NZD in New Zealand and 42.51 PHP in the Philippines. There’s also no info on when the new scheme will come into effect.
Elon Musk vowed to rid Twitter/X of spambots even before he acquired the platform in 2022. One of the measures he implemented was to start charging for the blue checkmark “verified” status, though that did little – both anecdotally and according to research – to solve the issue.