X, formerly known as Twitter, rolled out a USD1.00 (~Php42.51) annual subscription fee for new users in the Philippines and New Zealand. Not to make money, the goal is to apparently help fight bots.
The Elon Musk-owned company said that starting October 17, it will start its ‘Not a Bot’ beta program, which will only be implemented in the Philippines and New Zealand.
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New users will be charged a small fee of USD1.00 yearly subscription fee in the bid to improve the company’s combat against bot activity, spam, and more.
X added that everytime a bot creator wants to make another one, they are required to use another payment method.
“This will evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us combat bots and spammers on X, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. Within this test, existing users are not affected,” the company said.
When creating a new account, those who are in the Philippines and New Zealand will have to verify their mobile number, and then pay the USD1.00 annual fee so they can post, reply, repost, like, quote posts, and bookmark.
Those who don’t want to pay the fee can still have an X account, but only in ‘read-only’ mode. That means that can see posts, videos, and follow accounts.