X is attempting to fix that problem where your timeline is choked with the same content, especially spammy videos from YouTube or TikTok, that just cycles over and over. It’s calling the new plan its Original Content Rewards Program, and—God help me—it sounds promising.
The existing revenue-sharing program is now closed to new applicants, and will sunset entirely on September 7, with the last actual payments arriving around September 11. The new Original Content Rewards Program, meanwhile, is intended to “recognize creators who break news, share expertise, tell stories, create entertainment, and contribute meaningful perspectives to the conversation.”
According to X, under the new system the common practice of just adding a text caption to someone else’s content won’t count as original. But “originality” is a big umbrella here. X’s list of disqualifying attributes includes:
- Being misleading or false
- Being “inappropriate, sexually explicit, or potentially harmful to viewers”
- Being copied from another X user
- Being transferred over from another social media platform (like TikTok for instance)
- Explicitly containing coaching on monetization
The X revenue sharing program has been troubled since the beginning. It was originally overly weighted toward the haves in the attention economy, and one early tweak lowered the required number of impressions for eligibility from 15 million in the last three months to a mere 5 million. But since it was always structured to reward engagement, it incentivized various kinds of naughtiness.
For instance, in the program’s first year, Elon Musk announced a “slight change” meant to make it less lucrative to just lie like crazy and collect money from spreading hoaxes. Unfortunately, all X did at the time was de-monetize false posts that had achieved enough virality to merit a Community Note.
Making a slight change to creator monetization:
Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share.
The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2023
It’s been common enough over the years for the revenue sharing program to get tweaked from time to time in order to stop rewarding certain kinds of posts. For instance, back in March, AI-generated fake war footage without an AI disclosure had become enough of a problem that posting it now earns the creator a 90-day ban. Also in March the program was changed to discourage users from pretending to be Americans.
But while all these were reasonable policy changes at face value, one could be forgiven for wondering if X was taking a car in for frequent repairs when the right thing to do was to just cube that lemon and make a fresh start. That’s what seems to be happening here.
Only Premium, Premium+ or Premium Business X subscribers qualify for the new program. In addition to other requirements, they must have 500 verified followers.
