Elon Musk said that a small monthly service fee for using X could help fight off bot operations on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 

A subscription for all users would make “the effective cost of bots” very high and would require operators to use a new payment method for each account, Musk said in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Tesla Inc. offices in Fremont, California on Monday.

Netanyahu, who questioned Musk about antisemitism and hate speech on the platform, had asked how he could prevent “armies of bots” from amplifying hate speech. X currently has a free tier and subscriptions for individual subscribers and brands, and Musk said bots are the “single most important reason” to shift to monthly payments. 

Muskhad said that while it was difficult to “police” the 100 million to 200 million posts a day on X in advance, he could take steps to de-amplify hate speech. 

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