Elon Musk and X, formerly Twitter announced Tuesday that they are charging an annual $1 subscription fee in the Philippines and New Zealand to trickle down on spam and bots. 

The change will force new unverified accounts to pay $1 to post and interact with other posts, such as liking and commenting. If the user does not decide to subscribe or opts out, only reading posts and following are allowed. Existing users are not affected. 

The company says this will reduce efforts on bots and manipulation, however, most users disagree. Many users have pointed out that spambots already abuse the $11 X Premium feature, a paid subscription to be verified. Others have pointed out that spambots appear in messages and under posts, with no change in getting rid of them. 

It is unclear whether or not this change will take place in other countries, as Musk and X are testing it for now. If it does though, it will most likely lead to people leaving for other sites such as Threads and Bluesky,  X competitors, as many have proved disapproval of the new changes Musk and X have made over the past few months. Still, though, X leads, and the change may or may not be imminent.