X begins charging new users $1 a year in New Zealand, Philippines - Apparently it's to stop the proliferation of bots, though it must be noted that it will also exclude anyone that is unbanked. The number of unbanked people in the world is a worryingly large amount of people: one-third of adults – 1.7 billion – were still unbanked in 2017. You'll still be able to create read only accounts for free, but it's quite clearly censorship. All accounts should be read and write. www.bbc.com #