Twitter/X lets new users in two countries pay to post tweets

Twitter/X requires new users in the Philippines and New Zealand to have a subscription to post and retweet tweets. The subscription costs approximately one dollar per year.

The measure is intended to reduce the amount of bots, reports Twitter/X. The company says users must first verify a phone number and then choose a plan. If they do not do this, they can only use the platform ‘read only’ and therefore only read tweets and follow accounts.

For now, this is just a test. It is unknown whether the company wants to take the step worldwide if the test proves successful. The risk of a paid subscription for posting is that new users, who are not yet familiar with the platform, decide not to take out the subscription and therefore fewer new users will post on the platform. The potential benefit is that the small annual payment deters bots. X calls the test Not A Bot. The subscription costs approximately EUR 0.71 for users in the Philippines, and around EUR 0.80 for New Zealanders.