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THE SOCIAL MEDIA site X, formerly known as Twitter, has announced that it has begun charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines to use basic features like posting messages.
X, owned since last year by billionaire Elon Musk, said in a statement that its new subscription method should “bolster” existing efforts to reduce spam and “manipulation of our platform and bot activity.”
Under the trial, new web users in the Philippines and New Zealand will have to pay X around $0.75 and $0.85, respectively, every year, in order to access basic functionality like posting on the site.
Those who decline to pay the nominal fee will only have access to a “read only” version of the platform, limiting them to reading posts, watching videos and following accounts, the company said.
“This will evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us combat bots and spammers on X, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount,” it added.
Existing users in these countries are not affected.
Musk has made a number of controversial changes to the social media firm’s management and product since he acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion.
He recently floated the idea of charging all users a nominal fee to use the site in a bid to tackle fake accounts — drawing sharp criticism from users around the world.
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Under level5 lockdowns if people stay home they will average 1500 steps per day walking around the house. People should do 10k steps per day. When attending work people typically put up 3000 to 5000 from that activity if the work is non laborious. Now that would be reduced to 1500. This is a real problem. You are short 8.5k steps. To achieve this you need to walk 3km twice a day or walk 6km in one go. Nephet should be giving this advice but now you know it. Get out and start walking. Get 6km to 7km of walking per day to ensure your health is not another victim of this coronavirus. Do it. Start walking today.
March 2021 even
March 2021 even
I presume the headline should read 2021 not 2020
March 2021 even
@wee: When?
Hopefully it won’t be needed around late Feb/March once the vulnerable start getting vaccinated en masse, This extension just gives comfort to those who will be signing off and returning to work in December.
@David Lee: unlikely. None of the vaccines have met EMA approval, and that won’t happen till the end of December for the first lot. The first batches will be few in number, so vulnerable people won’t even start to be vaccinated by then. At that point you can expect some of our frontline workers to be vaccinated, but that’s about it.
I’m not sure about taxing the PUP but the way they have set up how they are going to tax the TWSS is all wrong. It forces employees who were working to take a pay cut.
@mikeinclon: have we not been over this ? You’re only looking for attention
What about the EWSS?
Great, so the people still waiting for the errors that occurred with the PUP since March will be waiting until at least next April for it to be rectified.
March 2021
have your say