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Elon Musk, the tech mogul, has made many changes since taking over the $44 billion X social network in October last year, when it was known as Twitter.
It laid off thousands of employees, introduced a payment option, removed content moderation and reinstated previously banned accounts, including that of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
In July, it said the platform had lost about half of its ad revenue. Bots (accounts run by computer programs rather than humans) are common in X, where they can be used to artificially amplify political messages or fan the flames of racial hatred.
In an interview with Musk on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the issue of online anti-Semitism and how X could "prevent the use of robots — armies of robots — to reproduce and amplify it."
Musk responded that the company was "moving toward a small monthly payment for using X." "It's the only way I can think of to fight huge armies of robots," he said. "Because a robot costs a fraction of a cent – call it a tenth of a cent – but if someone has to pay even a few dollars, a smaller amount, the effective cost of robots is very high. And then you also have to have a new payment method every time you have a new bot."
The conversation, which was relayed by Musk, accused the ADL of making baseless allegations of anti-Semitism that scared off advertisers and hurt his company's revenue, and threatened to sue it for billions of dollars.
- Elon Musk