Elon Musk has hinted that all users of X, earlier known as Twitter, may have to pay for access to the platform.

In a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk said a payment system was the only way to counter bots. “We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” he said.

“A bot costs a fraction of a penny” to make, Musk said. “But if somebody even has to pay a few dollars or something, some minor amount, the effective cost to bots is very high.”

“We’re actually going to come up with lower-tier pricing. So we just want it to be just a small amount of money,” he said, adding, “This is a longer discussion, but in my view, this is actually the only defence against vast armies of bots.”

Musk also said that X now has 550 million users who use the platform every month and create somewhere between 100 to 200 million posts every day.