True...but $1/year is so trivial that I don't think it's even token performative anti-spam. (Yes, ignoring Elan's words.)
My three favorite theories:
- $1/year is just the start, to get billing information on lots of people, before they ramp up the costs. (And X probably has back-end ways to further monetize the data on $1/year users.)
- $1/year is trivial at n=1...but for large-scale spam and bot operations, getting enough credit cards (or whatever) to "spin up another 10K fake X accounts this month" could be a far greater barrier than the $10K. For parts of X stuck playing Whac-A-Mole, more friction in the mole-army spawn process is a good thing.
- Elan's emotions are screaming "millions of people using my X for free!", and he's reacting to that emotionally.
