X widens Articles access to Premium users as Nikita Bier hints at more launches

X just opened up Articles to all Premium subscribers, ending the feature’s exclusivity to Premium+ users. Nikita Bier, the platform’s product head, announced the change earlier today and teased several more updates coming throughout the week.

Articles launched back in March 2024 as a Premium+ perk. The feature lets people publish long-form content with formatting tools and embedded media, similar to what you’d find on Medium or Substack. Until now, you needed the top-tier subscription to access it.

Bier says X has watched “some incredible articles go viral over the last few weeks” and wants more writers using the platform. I’d assume one of those articles is the one from Matthew Dowd, where he called out Pickle for potentially misleading claims about their “soul computer” glasses. That article has close to 600K views.

That said, he didn’t share specifics about the other updates planned for creators and power users, just that they’re aimed at people who actively post and engage on X.

The timing’s worth noting. Musk recently told Bier to jack up creator payments to levels that could rival YouTube. X has also been dealing with backlash over Grok, its AI assistant. The tool is being investigated by UK regulator Ofcom for essentially undressing women and minors by replacing their clothes with bikinis in public posts.

Some Premium+ subscribers aren’t happy. One person replied to Bier’s post asking what advantages the higher tier even offers anymore, especially since the price went up. Premium+ still gets you no ads, more Grok usage, and bigger reply boosts, but the gap between tiers keeps shrinking.

What’s coming in the next week remains unclear, but X clearly wants to keep creators engaged and posting. Whether expanding Articles access actually brings more writers to the platform is another question entirely.

We stand out from the tech-media crowd because we break news stories; we mainly bring you stuff that you won’t find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Our stories have been picked up by some of the world’s most popular websites and media outlets—more info is available here.