Though it’s been a while since we’ve talked about Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire has been quite busy behind the scenes at X, formerly known as Twitter. Ever since he became chairman of the social media platform, Musk has been rolling out new changes, such as a large-scale rebranding and mass firing, and he seems to be at it again.
Recently, Musk announced two major things on his platform: the first is a new monetization scheme and premium tiers, while the second is issuing a challenge to the free encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. Here’s what you need to know.
New Premium Tiers
For the longest time, Twitter has been widely known for being a free social media platform, but that will all change soon, thanks to the billionaire’s announcement. In an official post, Musk said that two new tiers of X Premium, previously known as Twitter Blue, subscription plans will be hitting the platform shortly. In the same post, he elaborated that the lower tier will have all the functionalities of the social media platform, but with no reduction in ads, while the higher tier features an ad-free experience, but the price for these premium experiences is yet to be determined.
Musk has also announced a fixed rate for those living in the Philippines and New Zealand. As of Tuesday, 17th October, X has begun experimenting with a new monetization scheme called “Not A Bot” in the aforementioned countries to curb the growing number of spam and bot accounts. New accounts made in those countries starting now must pay US$1 (RM4.78) per year to use the platform normally; otherwise, they will “only be able to take “read only” actions, such as: Read posts, Watch videos, and Follow accounts.”
Dickipedia
If he’s not busy meddling with his own platform, he goes about and meddles with other websites. In a recent string of tweets, Musk offered a generous donation of US$1 billion to Wikipedia if they’re willing to rename their site “Dickipedia”. “Please add that to the [cow and poop emoji] on my wiki page”, the X chairman added. He ended the thread by saying it is “in the interests of accuracy,” indicating what he thinks about Wikipedia.
It’s no secret that Musk despises the left-liberal media, as he frequently criticises them. He also has equal contempt for Wikipedia, as the online encyclopaedia has a well-known leftist bias. He had previously criticised Wikipedia and its “motivated” editors for information manipulation and factual distortion.
When journalist Ed Krassenstein chipped in on the conversation, he suggested that Wikipedia do it and immediately change back after receiving the money. Elon then added that the online encyclopaedia should keep the name for at least a year. This bold offer originated from an earlier tweet where he criticised the Wikimedia Foundation for wanting so much money.
Courtesy of the app’s very own Community Notes, Musk immediately received the answer he was looking for. This is not the first time Musk and Wikipedia have clashed. According to Business Insider, in May, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales chastised Musk for his decision to restrict certain content on X in the run-up to Turkey’s presidential election. Under Musk’s leadership, the social media platform has reportedly become more compliant with government requests for censorship and surveillance.
Source: X [1], [2], [3], [4], Complex, Insider, Wikimedia Commons [1], [2]
![[1]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Logo_1.0.png){kind=link}
![[2]](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twitter_new_X_logo.png){kind=link}