To combat bots and spammers, Elon Musk’s X to charge new users in two countries $1 in pilot

Microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) will soon start charging an annual subscription of $1 for unverified accounts from users in New Zealand and the Philippines under its new programme — Not a Bot — the company said on Wednesday.

This will, however, not affect existing users. The company has termed this annual fee as a “test to bolster its efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity”.