Elon Musk to Roll Out Twitter Feature That Allows Media Publishers to Charge Per-Article

Readers would then have access to articles for a fee that would otherwise be behind a subscription paywall

Elon Musk, Verified blue check (Getty Images)
Elon Musk, Verified blue check (Getty Images)

Elon Musk announced on Saturday that an upcoming Twitter feature will allow creators to monetize their content by allowing media publishers to charge on a per-article basis.

“Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click,” Musk said. “This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article. Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public.”

This is one of many changes that Musk has made to the social media app. Earlier in the week, he announced the subscription feature which gives content creators the opportunity to make money off their content by charging a monthly fee. Musk vowed all monies made will go to the creators, and Twitter will not take a portion of the profits.

The most controversial change the world richest man made was taking away verification checks from legacy accounts earlier this month. Musk admitted he’s paying for some notable people to keep their blue checkmarks, among them Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, though many high-profile users asked him not to.

Last week, just days after Twitter removed all blue check verification marks from accounts that are not subscribed to Twitter Blue, Musk, for unknown reasons, gifted certain users a free blue check — whether they asked for it or not. 

And just yesterday, social media users started flocking to Bluesky Social, the Twitter alternative created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The invite-only platform, which has not formally launched and is one of several rival platforms to emerge in recent months, has been picking up steam in recent days. According to Fortune, Bluesky Social has been downloaded 360,000 times from Apple’s app store worldwide, with over a million more users on the waitlist.

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