Elon Musk says governments and businesses could face a ‘slight cost’ to use Twitter

GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS accounts on Twitter could face “a small cost” to stay on the social media platform, Elon Musk has said.

The would-be Twitter owner and Tesla boss said the site would “always” be free for “casual users.”

Musk agreed to a $44 billion takeover deal with Twitter’s board last month, saying at the time that in addition to improving the site’s free speech principles, he hoped to “enhance the product with new features.”

Its acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Twitter will always be free for casual users, but there may be a small cost for business/government users.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 3, 2022

Twitter has already launched a premium, subscription-based version of the service in some countries, where users can pay a monthly fee to access additional features to “personalize your Twitter experience,” including an Undo Tweet tool to retrieve recently sent posts.

The billionaire has said he also wants to eradicate spam bots from the site and “authenticate all humans”, and has expressed support for a tool to edit already published tweets, something Twitter had previously confirmed was already in development.

Yesterday, the social networking site announced a trial of another new feature, Twitter Circle, which will allow users to share tweets with a smaller crowd of up to 150 selected users.

The tool is now being rolled out for some users to test, and Twitter says it’s based on the idea that “some tweets are for everyone and some are just for people you’ve chosen.”

It has been compared to Instagram’s Close Friends feature, which also allows users to share content with a select group of people instead of posting it publicly.