The billionaire has begun charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines 1 USD a year.

The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has introduced a yearly subscription amounting to the equivalent of 1 US dollar for new, unverified accounts in New Zealand and the Philippines – without affecting existing users.

“This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver,” the company said. 

New users who opt not to pay will be unable to like, quote, reply, post and repost messages, but will still be able to “read for free” the content published by others.

Newly-registered users will be first required to confirm their phone numbers and then select a subscription plan as the second step of the test, such as the 1-dollar annual fee, the X premium package, and the Verified Organizations option, X explained.

Elon Musk, who owns the company, has named the test program “Not a Bot.” He clarified that it “won’t stop bots completely, but it will be 1000X harder to manipulate the platform.” 

A month ago, the billionaire admitted in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he intended to charge a global fee from every X user, thus moving the platform onto the paywall category. 

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