Elon Musk earlier this month mentioned X/Twitter is “shifting to having a small month-to-month fee to be used of the X system” — a step that’s mandatory, he mentioned, to thwart the plague of bots flooding the platform.
Is the corporate the truth is going to implement such a price? Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of the Musk-owned social community, dodged the query when it was posed to her on stage at Vox Media’s Code 2023 convention Wednesday by interviewer Julia Boorstin, CNBC senior media and tech correspondent.
“Elon Musk simply introduced a brand new month-to-month price for customers,” Boorstin mentioned. “And my query for you is, Do you need to begin charging all customers of X, as he mentioned, and what number of customers do you assume you’ll lose because of this?”
After a pause, Yaccarino mentioned, “Could you repeat?” Boorstin responded, “Elon Musk introduced you’re shifting to a completely subscription-based service. Nothing free about utilizing X.” Yaccarino mentioned, “Did he say we had been shifting to it particularly, or he’s fascinated with it?” Boorstin: “He mentioned that’s the plan. So did he seek the advice of you earlier than he introduced that?”
“We discuss every thing,” Yaccarino replied, however didn’t reply the query about when X/Twitter may institute a month-to-month subscription price for all customers of the platform. She mentioned Musk employed her not solely as a result of she is an skilled ad-sales exec however extra broadly due to her background as “a really senior govt.”
Musk’s feedback about charging X/Twitter customers got here throughout a dialogue on AI that included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Musk mentioned the month-to-month price is perhaps “just a few {dollars} or one thing,” which he mentioned can be ample to discourage the creation of bot accounts. According to Musk, X has 550 million month-to-month energetic customers, who share 100 million-200 million posts every day on the social community.
During her look on the Code convention, Yaccarino defended Musk — asking the group rhetorically, “Who wouldn’t need Elon Musk sitting by their facet operating product?” — and mentioned she expects X/Twitter to show a revenue in 2024. Yaccarino began the CEO job in June, after most lately serving as NBCUniversal’s prime advert gross sales exec.
Also talking on the Code convention Wednesday was Yoel Roth, previously Twitter’s head of security and integrity, who exited final November after Musk’s takeover — and mentioned he has been the goal of harassment and loss of life threats after Musk attacked him on Twitter. (According to Roth’s latest op-end within the New York Times, Musk posted a tweet that took “a paragraph of my Ph.D. dissertation out of context to baselessly declare that I condoned pedophilia — a conspiracy trope generally utilized by far-right extremists and QAnon adherents to smear LGBTQ individuals”).
When Boorstin requested Yaccarino about Roth’s feedback, Yaccarino responded that she doesn’t know Roth and that the corporate isn’t the identical place it was when Roth labored there. “I work at X, he labored at Twitter,” Yaccarino mentioned, per the Verge. “It’s a brand new day at X. And I’ll depart it at that.”
