Paying X to wage war on bots? I don’t know. Here are Musk’s latest announcements
Elon Musk has said that all X users may have to pay to access the platform in order to thwart bots. Facts, words and questions
X will make everyone pay for using the platform to fight the bot problem: according to owner Elon Musk.
In a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Musk's Tesla offices in Fremont, California, the billionaire entrepreneur said that the social network way to combat bots on the platform.
Musk has made many changes since taking over the network for $44 billion in October last year, when it was known as Twitter. He fired thousands of employees, introduced a payment option, removed content moderation and reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of former US President Donald Trump.
But the San Francisco company now under the ownership of the owner of Tesla and SpaceX is struggling to regain the trust of advertisers. Musk said earlier this month that Twitter's U.S. ad revenue was down 60%. He attributed the company's advertising challenges to civil rights and consumer groups putting pressure on big brands, Axios recalls.
X currently has a free tier and subscriptions for individual subscribers and brands, and Musk says bots are the “most important reason” to move to monthly payments.
All the details.
MUSK AT WAR AGAINST THE BOT ARMIES ON
Elon Musk has long claimed that his solution to getting rid of bots and fake accounts on the social media platform involves paying for verification.
As Startmag wrote in March, “It is not the first time that the South African entrepreneur has taken issue with bots, i.e. the false profiles that ignite and often inflame discussions on the platform: coincidentally, he complained about it at the time of the acquisition, in an attempt to drive the price down. He complains about it again today in an attempt to justify a move that will only highlight the content of paying members, forever subverting the rules that had governed the social network until now." In March, Musk replaced the platform verification program (the blue check marks that verify the authenticity of profiles) with the Twitter Blue subscription program.
BUT WHAT ARE BOTS
Bots – accounts run by computer programs rather than humans – are common on X, where they can be used to artificially amplify political messages, fake news or fuel racial hatred.
“The definition of Bot is automated accounts, completely managed by a machine capable of mimicking human behavior thanks to 'intelligent' algorithms that become 'persons', complete with photos and presumed followers or friends,” Maurizio explained in 2021. Tesconi of the Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of the Cnr of Pisa . “The purposes for which they are created can be the most varied, licit or illicit, ranging from dating to the manipulation of electoral campaigns, to pumping up the stock market prices of empty or non-existent companies”.
According to the IT expert, “building an army of Bots is not difficult for a programmer and not too expensive either: there are tens of thousands of sites with ready-to-use code to create your own Bots, as well as multiple services where it is possible to buy accounts fakes with a few dozen dollars."
“There are 39 countries in the world where episodes of manipulation by political bots are reported in scientific literature. The first cases of significant manipulation date back to 2010, during the electoral campaign for the special elections to the United States Senate" recalled the Cnr Almanac.
MONTHLY PAYMENT FOR ALL THE SOLUTION?
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a conversation with the entrepreneur raised the issue of online anti-Semitism and how X could "prevent the use of bots – armies of bots – to reproduce and amplify it." Musk responded that the company is “moving towards a small monthly payment for using System X.” “It's the only way I can think of to fight vast armies of robots,” the X owner admitted.
A subscription for all users would make “the effective cost of bots” very high, because each bot would have to register a new credit card, Musk explained.
He added that the company plans to offer “a lower-tier price” than what it currently charges its X Premium subscribers, which is about $8 a month.
“A bot costs a fraction of a cent,” Musk added. “But if someone has to pay even a few dollars or something like that, a small sum, the actual cost of creating a large amount of bots would be “very high.” “And then you also have to have a new payment method every time you have a new bot” added the American billionaire.
So Musk will try to fight bots by raising the cost of creation for those behind these fake accounts… but since it could be anyone — from an individual cybercriminal to a rogue state — it's hard to believe that a slight surcharge is a deterrent effective from bot generation.
THE NUMBERS OF
Finally, during the conversation, Musk also shared new metrics for X, noting that the site now has 550 million monthly users, generating 100 to 200 million posts every day. However, TechCrunch points out, it's unclear whether Musk is counting automated accounts, i.e. good bots like News Feeds or bad bots like spammers, among these numbers.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/pagare-x-per-fare-la-guerra-ai-bot-boh-ecco-gli-ultimi-annunci-di-musk/ on Tue, 19 Sep 2023 13:46:45 +0000.