Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on a ‘high’-risk paid video feature

On Nov 2, 2022

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Elon Musk‘s Twitter is pushing ahead with plans to charge for content on the social media site, now with videos.

Twitter is working on a feature to allow people to post videos to the site and then charge users to view them, with the social media company taking a cut of the proceeds, according to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post. The company appears to be aiming to rush out the new feature, referred to as Paywalled Video, with a target of just one to two weeks before launch.

But the team has “identified the risk as high,” according to the email, which was sent by an employee on 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 around those issues before moving forward.

Whether the feature was in development before Musk took over is unclear, and Twitter declined to comment Thursday. But the accelerated timeline gives the company’s internal review teams just three days to provide feedback on the potential risks.

The timeline could signal Musk’s intent to move far more quickly in building and launching 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 check mark of verification.

Musk bought the company for $44 billion last week, taking on billions in debt and promising fellow investors a hefty return — despite some analysts valuing the company at roughly 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 floating a slew of major changes, often via his own Twitter account.

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The paid video feature would mark a significant shift for the platform, which is best known as a place for users to publicly share short thoughts, memes and links. Twitter recently branched 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 lets popular tweeters charge a subscription fee for bonus content.

It could also push Twitter, which is unusual among major social networks for allowing nudity and consensual pornography, into competition with sites that specialize in adult content.

According to the internal email describing the new video feature, which has not yet been announced, “When a creator composes 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.

Mock-ups of the feature viewed by The Post show a tweet with four images. Three are immediately…