X owner Elon Musk says the social media platform will charge new users a fee, the latest effort to combat bot and spam accounts.

X has launched a number of initiatives to fight bots, but the platform continues to struggle. Musk tweeted the latest plan, one that could end up doing more harm than good.

Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots.

Current AI (and troll farms) can pass “are you a bot” with ease.

The onslaught of fake accounts also uses up the available namespace, so many good handles are taken as a result

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) | April 15, 2025

X has been declining in popularity since Musk’s purchase of the platform, then called Twitter. With the success of Threads, Mastodon’s growing popularity, the public release of Bluesky, and others, convincing new users to pay to post seems like a hard sell that may backfire spectacularly.