First a paywall, next ‘PayPal X’? I know what Elon Musk is up to…

Making Twitter users pay a subscription is all part of Musk’s masterplan to transform X from the ‘world’s town square’ into a monolithic ‘everything app’… but don’t panic, says former employee Marc Burrows – it won’t work

Elon Musk has announced a ‘small monthly payment’ to use X (formerly Twitter) (POOL/AFP via Getty)

Elon Musk wants us all to pay for Twitter. In a recent conversation with, of all people, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk casually mentioned he’d been considering requiring all users of the platform (which literally no one calls X) to pay a fee for access – a move framed as a means to counter bots on the platform.

According to Musk, implementing a “small monthly payment for the use of the system” would serve as a deterrent against the proliferation of automated accounts. The Tesla and SpaceX honcho – and occasionally the world’s richest man – hasn’t yet clarified whether this was an off-the-cuff remark or a precursor to concrete plans in the pipeline.

Staggering as it might seem to suggest Musk might have some ulterior motives for his move, this probably isn’t about fighting bots. In the past, he’s said that he’d like the platform to be an “everything app”, and has mentioned numerous times that this would include the ability to pay for things online; just as Musk had hoped to do with X.com, the late-Nineties start-up he co-founded that was eventually renamed PayPal… once the board had forced Musk out. Once everyone on the platform has their payment details at their fingertips, that becomes much more feasible. Cunning.

Do not trust the world’s richest men. Definitely don’t give them your card details

The paywall is a harbinger of Musk’s present-day vision for X, albeit on the precarious grounds of a platform recently embroiled in a maelstrom of controversial moderation decisions and chaotic rebrands. Musk is piloting an unrestrained experiment, leveraging a platform that even he says needs to put open discourse at the forefront, as a laboratory for his “everything app” ambitions, drawn heavily from the super-app blueprints that have seen success in other parts of the world.

This is a calculated step towards transforming X into a monolithic entity that swallows various services, including digital payments — like WeChat, the ubiquitous Chinese app that handles browsing, social media and payments, but is fraught with antitrust issues that are hard to get around if you’re not, for example, backed by the Chinese state.

The two visions for X that Musk has outlined – as “the world’s town square” and “the everything app” – are incompatible. Twitter has always been for everyone. We often talk about there being several Twitters – “Sports Twitter”, “Gay Twitter”, “Porn Twitter”, “Politics Twitter”, “Movie Twitter”, “Left Twitter”, “Right Twitter” and on and on. It’s not just one conversation, it’s thousands of interlocking communities, each with its own ticks and in-jokes. A paywall, even for a small amount, is going to rip these communities to pieces. People will leave in droves.

Musk instinctively recoils at phrases like “diversity” and “representation”, but they’re essential in a properly democratised social network. Making people pay is not democracy or freedom of speech, it’s a combination of ego-driven cackling and rampant capitalism. Do not trust the world’s richest men. Definitely don’t give them your card details.

Musk’s appetite for change is, as ever, reckless. Changing office signs without permits, pushing verification changes without thinking them through… it all points to a deeper malaise: a disconcerting disregard for regulation and due process. It paints a picture of a leader steering with impulsivity, and while he’s at it, eroding the trust bedrock on which the things he wants – financial and social systems – rest. This goes beyond gutting our favourite online hangout. We cannot let this man create the western WeChat. We can’t trust him with it.

The good news is that it’s never going to work.

A paywall will kill this version of X just as dead as the previous one. Meanwhile, X’s competitors are finally getting their act together. Bluesky, a platform founded by former Twitter employees, recently reached a million users. For X refugees, the platform is a joy, just as mad, informative and irreverent as the one we’re fleeing could be.

Musk may believe barricading discourse behind a paywall will aid his ambitions. But in reality, it will only further destabilise a platform already reeling from his bats**t leadership. X’s value lies in open access enabling voices marginalised elsewhere. By compromising that, Musk risks fracturing communities and accelerating its decline.

And that’s probably not a bad thing if it means torpedoing his vision, as much as it might break the hearts of those of us who have spent over a decade playing in that sandpit.

We must remain vigilant against the consolidated power his “everything app” vision represents. Social platforms succeed by facilitating diverse conversations, not centralising control. If Musk can’t see that, he will finally extinguish the chaotic, flawed, glorious town square that Twitter became.