Paid account social media will be only media that matters: Musk

San Francisco: Twitter boss Elon Musk on Monday said that paid verification increases the cost of bots by 10,000 per cent and makes it much easier to identify bots by phone, so paid accounts will be the only social media that matters.

“Given that modern AI can solve any ‘prove you’re not a robot’ tests, it’s now trivial to spin up 100k human-like bots for less than a penny per account. Paid verification increases bot cost by 10,000 per cent and makes it much easier to identify bots by phone and CC clustering,” Musk tweeted.

“Obvious conclusion: paid account social media will be the only social media that matters,” he added.

Many users expressed their views in response to Musk’s post.

“I’ve noticed some accounts have, say, 130k followers one day, and 90k the next…and keep going up and down. Is it due to bots?,” a user commented.

“We’ve already found a way around this. And it’s automated. And able to scale very easily,” another user said.

Meanwhile, Musk has announced that Twitter will remove all legacy Blue verified checkmarks for both individual users and organisations from April 1. Twitter Blue in India will cost Rs 9,400 a year for individual users.

Twitter Blue is now available globally and users can get Blue Verified for $7 a month if they sign up via a web browser.