(Washington) Elon Musk’s X platform announced Tuesday that it had started charging new users in New Zealand and the Philippines for basic services like posting messages.

The social network, owned by the eccentric billionaire since last year, said in a statement that the change was aimed at “reinforcing” the existing policy aimed at reducing spam (unsolicited messages) as well as the “manipulation of our platform and the ‘bot activity’.

New users from the Philippines and New Zealand will have to pay around $0.75 and $0.85 respectively each year to access basic network functions.

Those who refuse to pay these amounts will have access to the “only” “reading” function of the platform, that is, watching videos or following accounts.

This is “to evaluate a potentially powerful measure to help us fight bots and spammers on X, while balancing the accessibility of the platform with the low amount of the fee,” adds the network.

Users already registered in the two countries concerned are not affected by the measure.

Since his acquisition of Twitter at the end of October 2022 for $44 billion, Elon Musk has made a series of controversial changes within teams and in the products offered.