X/Twitter Wants New Users to a Pay Fee Before They Can Post

X still has a bot problem as evidenced by the numerous accounts asking you to check their bio for some reason. But Elon Musk has a brilliant plan to stop the issue on his social media platform: Pay him more money.

The X Updates Radar account posted on Monday that there is new language added to the site referencing a “small annual fee” new users will have to pay to use the platform. Musk claimed that this change was real and explained his reasoning. “Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots,” he said.

Musk went on to say in another tweet that new users would only have to put up with the fee for three months and write access would be free from there on. This makes things a bit confusing since the fee is annual, not monthly.

This tactic by X has already been tested. Back in October, the social media platform tried out charging the $1 fee for new accounts that were opened in New Zealand and the Philippines.

It appears that Musk—who wants to be perceived as living on the edge of the future with his Cybertruck, AI, and robots—can’t wrap his head around stopping bots on X. One of the big reasons why X began a $8 monthly subscription was to stop bots from taking over the platform. Instead, fraudsters found them beneficial and made use of verified bot accounts in their scams.

Since Musk’s takeover of Twitter in 2022, the platform has been riddled with issues. From scammers deceiving the platform to creating seemingly legit links that send those who click to scam sites by automatically changing Twitter URLs to X.com.