Comment on this story
comment
Elon Musk’s Twitter is moving forward with plans to charge for content on the social networking site, now with videos.
Twitter is working on a feature to let people post videos to the site and then charge users to watch them, with the social media company taking a cut of the revenue, according to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post. The company appears to be aiming to rush the new feature, called Paywalled Video, with a target of a week or two before launch.
But the team has “identified the risk as high,” according to the email, which was sent by an employee of Twitter’s “Product Trust” team. The email cites “risks related to copyrighted content, creator/user trust issues, and legal compliance” and says the feature will undergo a brief internal review of those issues before moving forward.
It’s unclear whether the feature was in development before Musk took over, and Twitter declined to comment Thursday. But the accelerated schedule gives the company’s internal review teams just three days to provide feedback on potential risks.
The timeline could signal Musk’s intention to move much faster on building and releasing new features than Twitter has in the past, even if that means taking on greater risks of abuse or liability. While Twitter makes most of its money from advertising, Musk has already said he wants to charge users, including for the blue verification mark.
Musk bought the company for $44 billion last week, taking on billions in debt and promising his fellow investors a big return, despite some analysts valuing the company at about half that price. Upon taking control, Musk immediately fired the executive team, installed himself as “Chief Twit,” brought in trusted business partners, and has been proposing a slew of major changes, often through his own account from Twitter.
Elon Musk is courting Twitter advertisers as he looks for new revenue streams
The paid video feature would mark a significant change for the platform, which is best known as a place where users can publicly share short thoughts, memes and links. Twitter recently branched out into live audio with a feature called Spaces and has begun experimenting with premium features, such as a “tip jar” for content creators and a “Super Follow” option that allows tweeters to popular to charge a subscription fee for additional content.
It could also push Twitter, which is unusual among major social networks in allowing consensual nudity and pornography, to compete with sites specializing in adult content.
According to the internal email describing the yet-to-be-announced new video feature, “When a creator writes a tweet with a video, the creator can enable the paywall once a video has been added to the tweet “. They can then choose from a preset list of prices, such as $1, $2, $5, or $10.
Mockups of the feature seen by The Post show a tweet with four images. Three are immediately viewable, while the fourth is obscured, with a padlock icon and the message “view for $1”. Paying that amount would unlock the video, with the creator getting paid through Stripe while Twitter takes an unspecified amount.
Non-paying users would not be able to view the video, but could like or retweet the tweet.
The email doesn’t specify what types of videos creators can post, though it raises concerns that users could post copyrighted content or use the feature to scam others. A Twitter employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said it looked like a feature that would likely be used at least in part for adult content.
Analysis: The problem behind all of Twitter’s other problems
Although Twitter is no longer public, it owes about $1 billion in annual interest payments on the debt Musk racked up when he bought the company. It also said it plans to charge users $8 a month to keep their blue verification mark that indicates the company has verified them as who they say they are, while giving them added features like priority in search results .
Some of that money could be used to pay content creators like YouTube, Facebook and TikTok, Musk said on Twitter on Tuesday.
He previously showed support for content creators on Twitter and engaged with some as he tried to make the case for users to become paid subscribers in exchange for a verification badge and other features.
“This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” he wrote in a tweet.
“Creators have to make a living!” he added in response to an enthusiastic tweet from a Tesla influencer, who praised the payment idea as a way to boost content creation.
Twitter will charge $8 per month for verification. What you need to know.
Twitter estimates that about 13 percent of its content is NSFW, or “not safe for work,” according to Reuters, which included the figure in a story last month about how Twitter was losing its most active users. NSFW content, along with cryptocurrency content, were the fastest-growing areas of English-language Twitter, according to an internal filing seen by The Post and first reported by Reuters.
Most large advertisers avoid NSFW content and hesitate to advertise on platforms that have a reputation for containing pornography. The issue has been one the marketing industry has had discussions with Twitter over the years, according to an executive at one of the largest advertising agencies who spoke on condition of anonymity. Rivals like Facebook and TikTok do not allow pornographic content.
In August, The Verge reported that Twitter had developed and then shelved plans for a subscription service focused explicitly on adult content, reminiscent of the lucrative adult platform OnlyFans. But the project went through an intensive review by an internal “red team” tasked with assessing all potential risks, and was ultimately derailed by concerns that Twitter could not ensure it was not monetizing child pornography. · legal or sexual abuse.
Musk has been in New York this week, in part to meet with advertisers. Last week he posted a note on his Twitter promising advertisers that the site would not become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.