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Elon Musk's X, previously known as Twitter, has started charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines a $1 annual fee just to use the platform.
The policy, which starts today, was first reported by Fortune's Kylie Robinson on Tuesday. It was quickly confirmed by the platform itself when it said that it was trialing its new "Not A Bot" program in those two countries. X did not specify if the trial would eventually be extended to other countries.
As part of the trial, "new, unverified accounts" would have to pay a $1 annual subscription fee "to be able to post & interact with other posts." Existing users would not be affected by the trial, the platform said.
The platform added that the new policy wasn't "a profit driver" and was instead meant to minimize the influence of bots.
Musk and his company have long pondered making changes to the platform's payment plans.
Last month, Musk told Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during a livestream that X might roll out a paywall for all its users.
"We are actually going to come up with a lower-tier pricing. We want it to be just a small amount of money," the billionaire said then. "It's a longer discussion, but this is actually the only defense against armies of bots."
On October 5, Bloomberg reported that X was planning to trial three premium service tiers for users based on the number of ads shown.
Musk has rolled out multiple changes to the platform since he acquired it in October 2022.
In April, Musk replaced the platform's legacy verification program — the blue ticks that verified the authenticity of famous personalities — with the Twitter Blue subscription program. Then, in July, he changed the platform's name from Twitter to X.
Musk has been focused on putting X on a path toward profitability, given the decline in its advertising revenues. In July, the billionaire said in an X post the company was in a challenging financial position.
"We're still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load," Musk wrote. "Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else."
Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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Kevin was a reporter at Business Insider's Singapore bureau. He reported primarily on the ins and outs of the business world, whether it be breaking news, covering CEO moves, tracking quarterly earnings, or writing explainers.He also covered careers and workplace issues, and has written about career transitions, the FIRE lifestyle, the college internship arms race, and the job hunt struggles faced by computer science majors.BackgroundKevin joined Business Insider's Singapore bureau in 2023. Before that, he was a civil servant at Singapore's Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment. He was appointed to the Singapore government's Public Service Leadership Programme, a talent development programme that develops capable and talented individuals for key leadership positions in the public service.Kevin’s journalism career began in college, where he first worked as a researcher for Channel NewsAsia and The Economist, and later as an intern reporter at Bloomberg News. In 2017, the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust awarded him the Leading Change Journalism Bursary. His stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Fortune, The Japan Times, and The Edge Singapore.Kevin holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the National University of Singapore, where he was an NUS Merit Scholar. He was also the recipient of the PwC Whole Leadership Award, the NTUC Income Prize, the CFA Singapore Prize, and the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize.
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