Twitter to soon allow publishers, media companies to charge users per click on articles

Twitter will soon allow publishers and media outlets to charge users per click on an article they post on the platform, CEO Elon Musk announced Saturday.

Musk said in a tweet that the platform will roll out the policy next month, which he said would allow users who do not sign up for a monthly subscription to a publication to pay more per article if they want to occasionally read one.

Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public,” he said.

The announcement comes amid increased tensions between Musk and at least some media outlets as the Twitter CEO had a “state-affiliated” label added to accounts for outlets like NPR, PBS and BBC and removed the platform’s old way of verifying legitimate accounts for public figures and organizations.

NPR President and CEO John Lansing slammed Twitter after the label was added, saying in a statement that “We were disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media,’ a description that, per Twitter’s own guidelines, does not apply to NPR.”

Twitter guidelines define state-affiliated media as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

The Russian state-run news agency TASS and the Chinese official news outlet Xinhua are labeled “state-affiliated media.”

Following the backlash, Twitter removed the “state-affiliated media” label from NPR, placing a “government-funded” label instead. NPR’s website states that on average, less than 1 percent of its annual operating budget comes from grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and federal agencies and departments.