Saved you a click: New Zealand and the Philippines are the countries.
Thats hilarious. Does a vpn get around this? Because if so, it wont stop botting
If I’m a bot owner and I could pay $500/year to ensure my 500 bots run unfettered, it might be worth it. I can influence a significant amount of discourse with 500 accounts xitting, rexitting the original xit that was xit out, etc.
If he thinks he can make money from bot managers, it may make sense.
It will probably decrease trust in the whole xitty system, but maybe Musk doesn’t care?
And you’ll use 500 accounts for that?
I think that when they are banned, you’ll have to come up with 500 new ways to pay
I think you underestimate how many validated credit cards come up for sale every week on the internet.
Trust me, paying $1 isn’t even a speed bump to scammers: they pay it with Other People’s Money.
That’s the tough part about white-hat, you follow the rules, they don’t.
It would unless they started banning VPN IPs. I guess Musk is stupid enough to do it
Dont most vpn companies cycle their active ips? Or is that more of a niche thing only one or two options do
There are still companies that actively maintain lists of VPN IPs. My employer is a big user of Akamai for CDN & web security. Although we don’t use it, I know Akamai has a highly accurate list of VPN addresses that customers have access to.
They have dedicated blocks of IPs assigned to them, he would just have to block the blocks.
if vpns still run in china where the entire security establishment (including all the network infrastructre) are playing cat and mouse with trying to block them i think they can manage it for a tech company clinging on with 1/3 of the required workforce.
I’m not saying it’s difficult to do, it’s actually pretty simple. I’m just describing how it would be done.
Vpns are open source, commodity software. You can set one up with a script at any webhost. He would have to block every site that lets you spin up server, which is most of the internet.
Its not possible to actually block vpns without nation state access to interent infastructure, and even then it’s not easy.
- It has nothing to do with bots. Bots were his way of trying to get out of being forced to make good on his legally binding offer to buy Twitter. He goes on and on about bots, but he’s stopped reporting metrics about monetizable users and just started reporting made up metrics like number of user-seconds and crap like that.
- The funny thing would be to use a VPN to simulate traffic from NZ so it looks like they try accessing it and then just give up.
Rounding, let’s say that there are 125 million people in the Philippines and New Zealand. And let’s say that for some reason they all decide to make a new Twitter account and pay for it in perpetuity. Elon paid $44 billion for Twitter. At this rate, this move would allow him to recoup his investment in…352 years.
Nice… I love math presented like this.
He doesn’t get the whole dollar.
CC often have a %+$ fee
E.g 2.5% and 10c per transaction
While the “not a bot” argument exists, it is a weak one. I suspect the goal of this is,
A. Convince users outside of NZ and the Philippines to either create an account or at least keep (not delete) their existing account. Twitter needs to prove to advertisers that Twitter has reach/influence and with this they can say “you may have heard Twitter is bleeding users, but did you know the number of new Twitter users has actually increased xx/yy?” and it won’t technically be a lie.
B. Elon really does think this service will be an everything app of the future. He and anyone who believes this is absolutely bonkers and should genuinely seek help. However the value of an account that is already onboarded (e.g. had a credit card on file) is worth far more than any regular account. Convincing an account to spend their first dollar is much harder than convincing them to spend their second and so on.
C. He was financed specifically to tank Twitter subtly and he’s doing a very job bad of it.
I highly doubt NZ is the center of a bot epidemic. It does (along with the Philippines), however, have high transit fees and twitter is hemorrhaging money.
Okay this is the point where I start to buy the theory that he’s purposely tanking the site
That’s still giving him too much credit. He’s just a moron.
I mean it’s hard to tell because he is very, very stupid, but he’s also just such a convenient idiot that I have to wonder at this point
“Convenient idiot” is such a marvelous way to put it. :D
Not a moron. There are plenty of things he’s good at.
Running an advertising-funded internet company and being likeable are two things he is not.
I beg they do this it’ll only make things worse
Downvote Musk spam.
The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle. Don’t be a useful idiot.
Elon Musk, as we all know it:
He likes spending it
Huh…
Shame those greedy security guys wanted to get paid so bad.
LOL. Fuck twitter. If anyone reading this hasn’t jumped ship yet, now’s as good a time as any. Mastodon’s mobile website makes for a great PWA, alternatively, Ice Cubes for iOS is a solid free third party mobile app. Now let’s talk desktop. The normal site is pretty good. But if you’re looking for something a little more robust mastodeck.com is a third party front end that’s great for power users and multitasking.
Haven’t heard of Mastodeck. Gonna have to check it out. But to add some android apps to your list Megalodon treated me well when I was using it and Moshidon looked good too. For those that don’t need something as crazy as Mastodeck on desktop though, there’s Mastodon’s built-in advanced view as well. I was never a Twitter user, but Mastodon and Firefish have been very fun to check out.
ETA: Tested Mastodeck with Firefirsh since other Mastodon clients seem to handle it and it also works. Just don’t be surprised when something goes wrong since it’s unsupported.
Tusky kicks ass for Mastodon on Android.
Think I tried it when I was just starting with Mastodon. Can’t remember if I didn’t like it or something. Might try it again
I charge $1/month to send email on my email service. There’s a reason for that. It’s because it’s the smallest amount I can charge, and spammers are unlikely to pay anything, no matter how small, to send email. If they do, and I catch them, I’d probably be able to get their payment account suspended. So, I understand why this could be a good approach to combatting spam. Here’s the problem with Twitter doing it:
- Elon has full control over the platform. It’s not like there are other providers that will block him if his users send a bunch of spam. He also has the ability to revoke all the messages that users have sent once they are discovered as spammers, whereas with email, once spam is sent, there’s nothing I can do about it.
- Email is actually useful. Tweeting is just self promotion. No one coordinates their doctor appointment with Twitter.
- Spam is basically the only thing keeping Twitter looking viable right now. Their users are leaving. Their advertisers are leaving. It’s maybe not the best time to be pushing the spammers away.
- Elon’s whole mission or whatever is supposed to be “freeze peach”, but this goes against that. The “digital town square” where “everyone has a voice” can’t have a price tag.
My first thought is that it still requires them to follow up on catching spammers (similar to the paid checkmark, this as a “solution” makes me think they won’t do that).
I could see spammers deciding “hey, I’ll make more than $1 before I’m caught” and do something with payment to hide their tracks (maybe a simple thing that should be known), meanwhile normal users say “Eh, I gotta pay? No thanks.”
It’s beginning.
To my recollection, Aotearoa and the Phillipines are both common countries for market trials, right? I wonder if he’s looking to see the response (Elon Musk questioning himself? Has he gained sentience?) or if he’s specifically looking to see what impact it has on how much it costs to operate in that country?
Either way, I hope they raise the price before the international rollout.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If you want to join X, the service formerly known as Twitter, via its website in New Zealand and the Philippines, be prepared to fork over $1 a year for the privilege.
X’s post doesn’t explain why the new $1 subscription is only for new users joining via the web and not the mobile app, or why Not a Bot is only being rolled out in two countries.
A guess would be that X has seen more bot activity from these regions than others, and that it’s much easier to create a bunch of fake accounts via the website.
“New users who opt out of subscribing will only be able to take ‘read only’ actions,” such as viewing posts and watching videos, according to the company.
(Confusingly, the “Not A Bot” terms and conditions indicate that people will be able to also subscribe from X’s iOS and Android apps, even though the main post on X’s help center only specifies web.)
Musk has been clear from the beginning of his Twitter takeover that he thinks charging will impede bot armies, though it’s estimated that a very, very small percentage of users are paying.
The original article contains 312 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 38%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’d be happier with the dollar.
