Not for everyone: Musk wants to introduce a fee for Twitter

Elon Musk is not yet the owner of Twitter – but he is already busy tweeting ideas about what he wants to change. There could also be a usage fee.

The purchase of Twitter by the eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has caused many millions of Twitter users to worry: what could Musk change? Will the network become a playground for rights and trolls if Musk actually scales back moderation, as he has repeatedly implied?

Now another fear could arise: will Twitter use cost money in the future? A tweet from Elon Musk, which he posted last night, gives cause for this concern:

In the first of the two tweets, he first jokes that the downfall of Freemasons was that they did their work for free – only to then go straight to Twitter in the second tweet: “Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe it will be a small cost for users from the commercial or public environment”.

Tweet causes uncertainty among users

The Twitter users then began to question in thousands of comments what exactly that could mean. For example, what exactly does “commercial” mean? Does that mean the user who earns a few hundred euros on the side with his small YouTube channel? Or the joinery on the corner? Or rather large corporations with billions in sales?

And what are “occasional users”? Maybe just a handful of tweets a month stay free?

All of this is still open – including whether such a change will really come when Musk takes control of the company – not everyone believes in that.

Meanwhile, numerous civil society organizations have written an open letter to advertisers. It calls for an advertising boycott should Musk actually reduce the moderation and sanctions of hate messages on Twitter.

However, it will still take a few months to process the purchase – only then can all of this be negotiated in concrete terms.