Billionaire and CEO of Tesla Elon Musk said that businesses and governments may have to pay a small fee to use Twitter. This comes shortly after Twitter’s board accepted his bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
The tweet which he shared late on Tuesday mentioned that everyday users of the microblogging platform, which he referred to as casual users, will continue to access the service for free.
Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users
For now, it is unclear how Elon Musk would go on about charging businesses and governments. It is still unknown if under his ownership, groups such as NGOs, human rights fighters, journalists, etc., would be made to pay to use Twitter. It is pertinent to know that the Elon Musk-Twitter deal is still on its way to being completed.
Twitter declined to make comments when approached by reporters.
Elon Musk already has plans for Twitter such as privatizing the company, creating an edit button, fighting scams, etc. Requiring government and businesses to pay to access Twitter may just be part of plans he hasn’t shared yet. The billionaire CEO seems to have new features planned for Twitter up his sleeves. One of such plans is to make direct messages end-to-end encrypted to protect messages from hacks.
While speaking at the recently held MET Gala, which he attended with his supermodel mother Maya Musk, Elon Musk spoke about the need to get bots and scams existing on Twitter off the platform. “We don’t want people getting tricked out of their money and that kind of thing,” he said.
There are speculations that suspended accounts on Twitter may be freed from their sentencing once Elon Musk takes ownership of Twitter. The billionaire who is a free speech absolutist may set accounts belonging to people like former President Donald Trump, free. Donald Trump, who got banned from Twitter for allegations pertaining to inciting violence says he’d not be returning to Twitter even if his account gets unbanned.
Elon Musk will be required to pay Twitter a termination fee of $1 billion if he can’t secure funding for his bid. Twitter will also have to pay Elon Musk $1 billion in breakup fee if the company decides not to go through with the deal as a result of another offer.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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