Elon Musk's X, previously known as Twitter, has started charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines a $1 annual fee just to use the platform.

The policy, which starts today, was first reported by Fortune's Kylie Robinson on Tuesday. It was quickly confirmed by the platform itself when it said that it was trialing its new "Not A Bot" program in those two countries. X did not specify if the trial would eventually be extended to other countries.

As part of the trial, "new, unverified accounts" would have to pay a $1 annual subscription fee "to be able to post & interact with other posts." Existing users would not be affected by the trial, the platform said.

The platform added that the new policy wasn't "a profit driver" and was instead meant to minimize the influence of bots.

Musk and his company have long pondered making changes to the platform's payment plans. 

Last month, Musk told Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during a livestream that X might roll out a paywall for all its users.

"We are actually going to come up with a lower-tier pricing. We want it to be just a small amount of money," the billionaire said then. "It's a longer discussion, but this is actually the only defense against armies of bots."

On October 5, Bloomberg reported that X was planning to trial three premium service tiers for users based on the number of ads shown.

Musk has rolled out multiple changes to the platform since he acquired it in October 2022.

(Source: BusinessInsider)