Twitter Will Allow Publishers to Charge Users to Read Articles

Twitter will allow publishers to charge users for access to individual articles, Elon Musk says.

In a Saturday tweet(Opens in a new window), Musk said the feature will enable users who “would not sign up for a monthly subscription” to a paywalled media outlet to pay a “higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article.”

Musk described it as a “major win-win for both media orgs & the public,” and teased a May launch. It’s unclear if Twitter has negotiated any sort of arrangement with individual publications or how much of a cut the social media service would take.

As Engadget notes(Opens in a new window), when Twitter replaced Super Follows (which let users subscribe to accounts to get access to exclusive content) with Subscriptions, Musk said the company would not take any money from creators for one year, after which Twitter would take a 10% cut on subscriptions.

Twitter no longer has a dedicated media team and automatically responds to press inquiries with a poop emoji.

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

Twitter recently shut down its free API and replaced it with a paid version that can cost enterprise customers tens of thousands of dollars per month. Some companies, including New York City’s transportion authority, have refused to sign up or left the platform entirely in response. 

Musk has sought to drive up revenue for the debt-laden company since his October 2022 takeover. Aside from reducing its workforce from 7,500 people to around 1,500, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO also made blue checkmarks a Twitter Blue feature.

Legacy verified accounts who did not pay for Twitter Blue had their checkmarks removed earlier this month, but the move does not appear to have convinced many of those people to pay $8-per-month for a blue checkmark. Many celebs with large followings had their checkmarks reinstated, whether or not they wanted them.