Ripple CTO David Schwartz critiques Elon Musk’s fee for new X users

According to Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, Elon Musk’s move to charge fees to new users of X (originally Twitter) is a poor decision. The policy recently rolled out necessitates users to make a payment for posting, liking, replying or bookmarking on the platform. Contrary to Musk’s ideas, such a fee is supposed to put an end to the bots and spam. The policy is currently implemented for users in New Zealand and the Philippines. Schwartz contends this action is opposed to Musk’s earlier pledge to preserve freedom of expression on the platform.

In his series of posts, Schwartz raised the alarm that enacting the fee on new users might be used to censor legal speech. He debated whether the stripping of specific kinds of speech resulted in a compromise of a major pillar of the forum. Schwartz considered that this policy may favor attitudes that match some preferences, thus reducing the credibility of the platform.

Elon Musk’s Fee Plan faces skepticism online

The reaction of X crypto community has been divided, to say the least, about X’s new policy. Here, users either look at it as something that would make free speech available or it will mute the anti-spam. Above all, renowned crypto sleuth ZachXBT questioned the likelihood for stoppage of fraud in its tracks. He said that there are accounts listed as businesses, but they are scams that have been placing ads on X for a long time and on large amounts.

Elon Musk says this tax will definitely be effective in limiting multimillionaires’ to bother bots and troll farms, in contrast to others who say these actors may not care about the tax. Fraudsters do not usually consider cash expenses to be a large proportion of the income they expect to make from their illicit business. While the borderless nature of the internet makes online speech and security complex to control, it also is the key to such complicated issues.

Concerns for crypto enthusiasts and a broader community

The X policy debate is very meaningful for the crypto community. Crypto fans and even the XRP Army have been quite affected by spam and scam e-mail campaigns targeting them. Ripple has been constantly alerting its community about fraudulent schemes, the ones that claim to have XRP tokens giveaway as a promise. The new tax might decrease the volume of fraud, but it is quite unclear how successfully it will work.