Elon, Who Insisted He Had Solved The Spam/Bot Problem, Now Says He Will Paywall Twitter To Stop Spam/Bots
from the admission-fee-to-the-public-square dept
So, remember when Elon first announced his plans to buy Twitter, and he claimed that it was “the de facto town square” and his top priority was to eliminate spam and scam bots?
“A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter. They make the product much worse.”
He tweeted out that he was going to “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
Of course, a month later, when he decided that he wanted out of the binding deal he signed that had no outs, he suddenly started pretending that he could get out of the deal because there were more spam bots than he originally believed. That made no sense, was wrong about the data, and also was not even remotely an effective legal strategy, as he ended up being forced to pay the price he had promised.
Of course, since then, Elon has repeatedly claimed that he’s magically fixed the problem of spam bots on the platform. Back in December of last year, Musk claimed that he had a plan to shut down bot IP addresses and that would magically solve the bot problem that he insists the company failed to fix before the genius that is Elon Musk showed up.
Musk took a bit of a victory lap about how he had defeated the bots, only to find out that… his actions did not do a damn thing to stop spam bots, which are now more prevalent than ever on the site. Of course, in the lore of Musk, everyone must pretend that the earlier announcements he’s made that didn’t pan out didn’t exist, so no one ever seems to follow up on any of these claims, or the fact that Musk has repeatedly promised that things like his $8/month verification problem will magically solve the bot problem, when it only served to further enable scammers to prey on people by pretending to be legit.
These are all entirely expected results that Elon could have understood if he hadn’t fired everyone who actually understood the process of fighting spam. None of this is secret. However, with Musk, he always has to ignore expertise and go with his gut, even when his gut is ill-informed.
The latest potential move he’s talking about is making everyone have to pay a small monthly fee to use exTwitter.
Among other things, Musk said the social network is “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system” in order to combat “vast armies of bots.”
As always with Elon, it’s difficult to know what he will actually do and what is him just talking nonsense. Having followed the guy and his announcements for quite some time now, it appears that he has a rather Trump-like ability to say ridiculously stupid stuff that he 100% believes in the moment, and the question of whether or not it actually goes anywhere comes down to two factors: (1) if someone close to him who knows how absolutely stupid the idea is can talk him out of it or (2) if someone close to him who knows how absolutely stupid the idea is can distract him with some new shiny object to take his attention off this idea for long enough that he forgets about it.
If either of those things happen, the plan to paywall “the de facto public square” to defeat the bots Musk already insisted he had defeated may just slowly fade away and be forgotten. If he does implement it, however, it will almost certainly be a disaster for exTwitter, and will lead to a much bigger rush to other sites.
The thing is, like so many of Musk’s ideas for exTwitter, this one is so unquestionably, obviously stupid and counterproductive that it just lays bare how little Musk understands about social media and the internet. I have my doubts as to whether or not he will actually go through with it, but I also have a morbid fascination with watching what would happen if he does…
Filed Under: bots, elon musk, monthly fee, paywall, spam
Companies: twitter, x
Comments on “Elon, Who Insisted He Had Solved The Spam/Bot Problem, Now Says He Will Paywall Twitter To Stop Spam/Bots”
To Koby, Matthew M Bennett, and all of the Elon Stanboys…
To every Elon defender here, I say this:
You think X/Twitter is doing so great, eh? Pay up. Put your money where your mouth is.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Elon Fanboy
Just wait until Reddit follow’s Elon’s lead again.
Re: Re:
Just wait till another dumb ass follows a dumb ass into the failed business category.
Remember AOL? They are still in business!
One can still buy buggy whips.
What a good business plan .. follow a dumb ass.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
Just wait until reddit follows Elon’s lead.
Re:
I think X/twitter IS doing great, in that its going to self destruct and I won’t have to hear about it anymore HAHAHAHAH
Re: Re:
If you don’t want to hear about it anymore you’re on the wrong website. 15 stories tagged “Twitter” in the past month here.
Re: Re: Re:
And you’ve bitched and moaned about everyone one of them in hopes senpai will* finally* notice you!
Re: What Does This Mean?
Will I need to pay to post or reply? Takes away half the fun of exTwitter. the fact that all the posts will be from people stupid enough to pay for that privilege – takes away more than the other half of the fun.
Will I need to pay just to read? ha. ha-ha. ha-ha-ha. Why would I go to a website like that which costs moeny? What’s the value for me?
So his solution to kill the bots is to make the product far worse than the bots ever did.
[insert Obi-Wan meme here]
“It was said that you would destroy the bots, not join them!”
Re:
Oh, and getting bots to pay for Twitter Blue.
I’m sure he’s thought out his business plan for Twitter Blue like he did Zip2 and his vision for Paypal.
I am legit shocked 8 states think he’s trustworthy enough to handle money.
“Twitter Blue failed, so now EVERYONE has to use Twitter Blue! By making it cheaper for everyone!”
I… I’m gonna need to actually develop a drinking habit to handle Elon’s stupidity.
There's a Xeet for everything
Better yet, there’s Elon’s Xeet from 3-may-22 saying
Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users
Could our lord and tech savior be pulling his ideas from his own ass as he goes?
Re:
They’d be more thoroughly processed and consistent then, I should think.
I am afraid that what you are seeing and what you are hearing is indeed his white matter as it is leaking out before catching intelligence.
That place is falling apart at the seams. There was straight up hardcore porn on my feed the other day. Not that I’m against porn, but I don’t go to Twitter for it. I go to Twitter because my local zoo charges money to watch monkeys fling poo.
Re:
Rule 34, every time.
Re:
“Trends for you” offered me the term “zionists” the other day. It’s contents were deserving hundreds of hate speech reports. The one i did bother to file returned a refusal to do anything.
Re: Re: When appealing to the KKK you don't take down racist comments
Makes (a disturbing amount of) sense, they’re hardly going to alienate their current user-base by taking stuff like that down after all.
Good!
Good! Kill it Elon! Twitter has needed to die for a while now. It was great when it was new and small but it turned into an outrage amplifier over time and their format makes it particularly good at that role. So I say let it die. We’ll all be better off without it.
Re:
Andrew Jackson would like to remind you that it was the newspapers of his time who managed to kill his wife.
Re:
The sad thing is, apart from the social stupidity and rampant nazis, Twitter is where news appears first. Witnesses post while the event is still happening, much of the unofficial news corps hangs out there. E.g., if you follow Ukraine events, annotated maps, videos from GoPros mounted on helmets, translations of Telegram posts by Russians, phone-cam shots from occupied areas, running tallies of equipment lost by both sides. Much stupid comment, but also commentary by generals and knowledgeable people. In other news, blow-by-blow reports of legal matters relating to the Jan. 6 plotters and rioters.
So far, most of that has not migrated to another site. None has reached critical mass.
Maybe it was doomed to fail, maybe it’s not something that can’t be sustained, and maybe we don’t actually need it. But Elmo is the immediate instrument of its destruction.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
Way to out yourself as a disgusting consumer of war porn, you depraved, pro-Nazi freak.
Re: Re: Re:
[projects facts contrary to evidence]
Re: Re: Re:
Must me nice to lie for either a pittance or parole, eh?
Musk's razor
Hanlon’s razor stipulates: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”/i>
Peel a layer from Hanlon’s razor and you have Musk’s razor: If malice and stupidity fail to adequately explain, attribute it to a need for seeking attention.
Re:
Hanlon’s razor stipulates: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Don’t forget the corollary: Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice pretending to be stupid.
It would work though...
His plan would work. It’s really no different than burning down your house to keep squatters from using it. In the end, you’re without a house, but you did succeed in keeping the squatters out.
Same logic here, can’t have bots on (ex)twitter if there is no (ex)twitter…
He truly is an interstellar genius.
No mere mortal could be so consistently and spectacularly wrong about so many things.
Re: Ahem
Donald Jessica Trump has entered the chat.Re: Re:
Jessica?
Re: Re: Re:
Like the gag in “The Producers” … Adolf Elizabeth Hitler.
To be fair, I kinda want to see a Twitter that’s nothing but bots arguing back and forth with each other all day.
Then again, Truth Social already exists, so…
Re:
Truth Social?
Wait, there’s this endless debate with AI Zizek and AI Herzog…
Why do I need to go to a white supremacist gathering spot when there’s 2 actual philosophy bots arguing endlessly?
I am still convinced he is trying to burn twitter to the ground just so that he can write it off as a business loss. That way he can divest himself of it without it “appearing” that it was his fault.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
You have proven to everyone that you do not pay taxes.
Re: Re:
Plebs pay taxes, billionaires have tax specialists making sure to use every loop hole there is.
You have proven to everyone that you are a pleb that has no idea about the tax-benefits that a billionaire can avail themselves to.
Re: Re: Re: oh we have a BILLIONAIRE in our midst!
So putting $44B in a big pile and lighting it on fire is a tax avoidance tactic?
Nah, Musk made some stupid commitments while high off his ass and was forced to follow through with them and rather than cutting his losses early on, he’s just dug himself further in ever since.
Re: Re: Re:2
To a billionaire? Yes.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:3
You have proven that you have never filed taxes.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, it proves he isn’t a billionaire.
Re: Re: Re:3
I mean, yes in the same way that you stuffing money under your mattress is a way to avoid paying taxes on interest income. You avoid paying taxes but you’re not any better off.
Re: Re: Re:2
You are missing the point, regardless of what stupid shit Elon engages in he can afford to have a bunch of accountants and tax-specialist take advantage of the tax-law to pay as little tax as possible while applying for huge amounts to deductions.
Re:
That would be a remarkably stupid way to lose money… A write-off would only recover a portion of the money he put into it in the first place, even assuming you could write off a bad investment (which I don’t think you can).
He’d be far better off selling at a loss.
To me it really looks like he blundered spectacularly in buying in the first place and now can’t admit the mistake. He seems to be succcumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. Strange, he has been remarkably immune to that in the past.
A small fee isgoing to stop bots. And it is going to stop bots more than regular users.
OK then.
Re:
Wait, did he actually say that? ’Cause blocking everyone from posting is the one surefire way to stop spam.
That Darn Elon...
Am I the only one who thinks this is Elon’s way to monetize state-sponsored & dark money bot farms? A few dollars/month/account will still be worth it to anyone hoping to disrupt the ’24 US elections.
This might also be the marker that Elon admits X will never be the “everything app”. The legitimate user base will be so small and his reputation so soiled that expanding into hiring and payments ain’t gonna happen.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
No, this is going to be how he turns his dog money investment profitable, by making twitter pay in dog coins.
Re: the bots are going to be no use
…when everyone bails from Twitter because there is no way that crap is worth a dime and even if it was, who’s gonna be crazy enough to turn over their credit card number to an unstable manbaby?
Well, at least this way, he can justify shutting down more servers, as traffic goes down…
Yes, I’m sure charging regular users to use the platform is totally a anti-bot measure and has nothing to do with an idiot scrambling to find new sources of income after driving off a bunch of advertisers and having his current ‘pay me to use the service’ offering flop…
Can you believe this x-eet? This x-eet is bananas!
More nuking, from orbit as they say, is the only way to be sure. The bird has perished. It’s ceased to be. It has gone to meet it’s maker!
The Masnick Law
Goodwin’s Law was never a law, but Masnick’s is progressing well to being one.
Content moderation at scale is an impossible task.
Musk’s death-spiraling $15B (down from $45B and going) has many problems, but “bots” is just a strawman. The real problems are allowing people to post sadistic inflammatory jackassian Xweets. That starts with Musk himself, continues with the incels and the magas and the Qanons that preceded him, and has nothing to do with bots or APIs.
Sand-ostritching is a tactic, but it’s never an effective one to resolve anything, other than a temporary alleviation of a really stupid person’s anxiety or impostor syndrome. Musk should have learned that by now, but it’s clear he did not.
Goodbye Xwitter. I never liked you. I like you less now. The quicker you die the less I have to waste my time scrolling past the StupidityOfTheDay and the quicker I can get to the real events.
E
P.S. The X should be pronounced like President Xi’s name. So technically it’s not EKS-witter, it’s ShiTwitter.
I’d pay money to see Elon put behind a wall. I would also hand over extra cash to get the honour of cementing the last brick in place.
Re: Cask of Amontillado
Shades of ever-scary Vincent Price walling a live man to his death in The Cask of Amontillado.
Re:
I mean, I can think of worse remakes than The Cask of Elontillado.
Re:
As long as the bricks are Tesla, I’d pay to watch.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Paying to watch
No, you’re an anonymous coward. You have the privilege of posting as nobody, but with that comes the fact that you are exactly nobody.
You have no funds to wager, no reputation on the line, and no followup to happen. ANY anonymous coward after you may “claim” your bullshit wager, disown it, or just make you look even more foolish than you already have.
The point of having AC is for people to offer their opinions without identifying themselves. A public wager is for people to bet their reputations or their fortunes.
You have neither. You will never have either. All of you, each of you, one of you. You’re one big “anonymous” and not the Cool Kids kind that wears V for Vendetta masks.
Opine at will. When you stray to pretending you have a reputation or gold at risk… sign your name or click “Cancel”.
Re: Re: Re:
Ummmm
Ok then ….
Re: Re: Re:
And you’re still a massive asshole.
I already RISK MY FUCKING LIFE just by commenting here anonymously. And I’m very well aware that all it takes is a determined “conservative” asshole to get me arrested or worse.
So fuck you. You’re not the one risking your life by commenting on the Internet. And as long as Mike allows anonymous posting I’ll be here.
I can’t and won’t force you to stop being an asshole as is your right, and you really shouldn’t, but if you continue to be that callous, then at least pretend to be nice.
Because you seem to want to remove MY RIGHTS while holding onto YOURS.
How fucking nice.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:2
take your meds
Re: Re: Re:2
I can think of a way to mitigate that risk, but you’re not going to like it.
Re: Re: Re:3
I will mitigate the risk however the FUCK I want to, because my government doesn’t believe in men marrying men. I’ve put up with their pro-American, pro-Chinese crap for too long because they think boys can’t kiss boys. FUCK THAT, and FUCK every asshole who disagrees. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO STOP ME.
Re: Re: Re:2
You realize John Smith already uses that excuse, right?
Re: Re: Re:
MUH REPUTASIIIIOOOOOONNNNNNNNN
Find someone who cares about tech dirt posts, first
Re: Re:
No the bricks come from Boring.
Re: Re:
Just say you’re a notable journalist with a breaking story on extremely influential bankers and you’ll be driving your Tesla home to write the story., that’s the fastest way to turn a Tesla into a brick, particularly when rounding a corner at 45 mph
Vibes?
What’s worse than a Nazi bar? A Nazi bar with a cover charge.
Well, if Elon does put up a paywall, maybe it’ll finally give the last few stragglers I still go to Twitter for reason to move to Mastodon. Most have Mastodon accounts, but ended up continuing to post on Twitter instead. I don’t understand it, but it’s the only reason I even view Twitter any more. Much happier on Mastodon and enjoy interacting with people there. Maybe the paywall will finally get them to make the jump.
So, by all means Elon, do eeet!
100$ per month for the win. 😂
Re:
I’m sure it will either be something like $1.69 / month or $4.20 / month
Re: Re:
The API is already charged $42k, and even more, I won’t be surprise if it’s 42$ a year, neither if it’s 420$ or anything more, and then Blue becoming 42$ a month (he urgently needs cash).
In any case, anything would be way too much for any regular user, but for running a bot/an army of bot, and possibly earning hundreds/thousands a month, these “small” fees are painless…
Also of note is that both items in that list of two factors come at GREAT risk of being fired by the petulant children.
What’s not being discussed is anything about advertisers. After all, they’re users too. And they certainly could launch veritable armies of bots, should they take such a notion….
Re:
Why would they bother though? If they really want to stick it to Elon they can do so much more effectively by leaving and taking their money with them.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
As I said earlier, Twitter is better than ever, especially since the departure of chief censor yoel r., who MM apparently seeks to emulate by deleting comments here (on TD) highlighting his (MM’s) being lambasted by an actual Pulitzer-prize winning journalist on Monday! 😮
Re:
Calling a platform that’s lost about 66% of its value since December “better than ever” takes a special kind of stupidity.
Masnick only deletes comments in extreme circumstances. Your comments not showing up is the cause of the spam filter. So stop being a spammy asshole.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
My comment was published instantly, and later deleted by Mike.
In it, I noted that he had been lambasted in no uncertain terms by a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist for his slavish dedication to propagating the lies of Big Tech in service to the degenerate liberal agenda…
Re: Re: Re:
Greenwald didn’t win the Pulitzer, he contributed to the series of articles about Snowden which made The Guardian win it. I’m sure the distinction is entirely lost on you so let me bitch-slap you a bit more, check the Pulitzer Prize-list of 2014 and see if you can find Greenwald’s name on it: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2014
Considering your language in describing any entity or person who doesn’t agree with your particular sick and warped worldview Hyman, having some of your sickness exercised on occasion is a blessing to everyone.
Greenwald is now a has-been who went down the shit-hole and are now sucking on the teat of the pig called conspiracy-theory, happily being cheered on by Tucker Carlson and other right-wing nutters.
Re: Re: Re:
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re: Re: Re:
You know we can see that post bro.
Re:
Fifty cents have been deposited into your account, Matthew.
In addition, your social credit score has gone up 10 points and should you ever be convicted for any crime, all you need is 50 more harassment posts to be eligible for parole.
Yes, that is applicable for insurrection as well.
We hope you have a nice day.
/s
Re: re: Twitter is better than ever,
Agreed. Getting something for free is easy, paying for something is much better.
Keep the poor people from talking. That’s how a public square should work.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
Imagine still being straight, white and male in 2023.
Your incestuous kind will be eventually wiped out of the gene pool and good fucking riddance when that happens.
Re: Re:
Yes Herman we know you want attention because dady didn’t love you or loved you too much.
Re: Re: Re:
“Make… Hywoman Rosen… call… me… daddy.” Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep that in mind.
Re:
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re:
Magats love when CSAM isn’t “censored”
Re:
Hey Jhon what ever happened to all those lawsuits you promised bro?
I remain delighted unsued by to dumb ass.
Re:
“As I said earlier, Twitter is better than ever”
And yet here you are…
His pay to subscriptors is genius! Just ask him.
Being less and less involved with the X-wit and his biz, I was laughing when his latest bot problem solver was leaked.
One of the people I follow purchased a Blue Check Mark two months ago. She got more money back each month. She does generate traffic, and I doubt that I could. But it does show the idiot has no real business sense. You do not give away money. Not until you have sufficient profit.
This is a result of Econ 101 style of thinking. Elon thinks he can solve every problem in the world with his spreadsheets. They cannot solve him being a clueless jerk. He doesn’t get that advertisers are the revenue stream he needs, and they don’t want to be advertising in a hellscape. Not even one with his super special spreadsheet making X-witter profitable by changing a zero to an eight for everybody on the planet.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re:
uhh, have you not noticed how nearly every internet startup has the “give away free shit” as their first step towards market dominance?
Re: Re:
Just because Elon is running Xitter as a startup doesn’t mean that it is one.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
The Spam Problem
Facebook is full of bots and spam
Twitter is full of bots and spam
CS:GO is full of bots and spam
This is all just a step towards digital id, remember that Elon cofounded OpenAI, so it was predictable that the bots would become a problem, and that the only solution is to make spam unprofitable.
For example that is why you have to pay for CS:GO prime, if you don’t want to pay with hackers with aimbots, and some could argue that its a feature not a bug.
Re:
Problem: The world is full of people who abuse technology to do bad things, like push their ideology, or to bully people into doing something they’d rather not do for some very good reasons.
And you, revenge porner, are very high on that list of people who abuse technology for nefarious purposes.
You are why we have to have rules against revenge porn. You are why we cannot have nice things. You are why we need the courts.
And you clearly need to go back to the Kiwifarms Legal Night School for the Jerks And Assholes.
Re:
What a weird nonsequitur.
In what way is spam profitable now?
I mean, he did say “… or die trying!” and on that front he has seen some significant successes.
Next up: Elon solves the world’s cybersecurity problems … by unplugging the network!! It’s cheap!! It’s effective!! He’s a super-genius!!
The princess and the stack of money under the mattress.
There are many more lucrative ways of profiting from crime. Tax avoidance is a 25%-50% win depending on your USixan tax bracket. That’s amateur country.
You could make more money flipping off a cop, getting arrested, and suing… and never even break the law.
Or, if breaking the law is your thing, you could exhort your stupidest of the stupid to take over the guvmint and then make hundreds of millions of dollars giving speeches about how you’re improperly being vilified. Being mentally addled, of course, you’d use a simple word your minions can understand, like “witchhunt.”
Nobody loses $30BN “for a tax break.” They (he) loses it due to an ego, sycophants, and sheer stupidity. The one guy kicking himself — Jim Chanos. He should have shorted TWTR.
E