Some people have been telling me that his first quote is unrelated to the second quote, but I believe it is, since in both of them he said it “was the only way he could think of to defend vast armies of bots”

"The single most important reason that we are moving to having a small monthly payment for the use of the X system, is it is the only way I could think of to combat vast armies of bots,"

… so pioritising posts written by by X premium subscribers, we’re actually gonna come out with a lower tier pricing so y’know, we’re wanting it to just be a small amount of money, that this is the (stumbles) it’s a longer discussion but in my view this is the only defense against vast armies of bots.

He says in both statements they are the only defense he could think of to combat bots, so if the statements were different, he would know 2 proposed defenses to combat bots, not 1. This is why I think that the 2 statements are interlinked with eachother and he was talking about a lower priced, premimum subscription all along, and that he was originally unclear.