Elon Musk’s X is finally cracking down on engagement farming with big overhaul to its monetization program

Elon Musk-led social media platform X is revamping its revenue sharing programme by deranking low-quality content and incentivising ‘original, high-quality content that brings new value to the Timeline’.

The new update was announced by X Product Head Nikita Bier, who in a post on X (formerly Twitter) wrote, “For this creator payout cycle, we’re experimenting with new tools to identify original authors of content and allocating a portion of revenue to them.”

“Reposts & commentary will always be a core pillar of X, but our Revenue Sharing programme should incentivise original, high-quality content that brings new value to the Timeline. This means rewarding the effort it takes to produce something, not just the poster who helped it travel furthest,” Bier added.

“This is how we build a richer Timeline and how X continues to be the most valuable platform in the world. The Revenue Sharing programme will continue to evolve to encourage creators to post their best content to X,” Bier further added.

Notably, X has been under criticism for months for promoting the practice of engagement farming, where accounts on the platform post low-quality viral videos or clickbait content just to improve the number of impressions on their posts, which was one of the key factors in the X creator payout.

Bier had also announced another update to the X creator payout programme earlier in the year, where the company stopped counting impressions on replies towards monetisation payout in order to stop ‘reply spam’. The social media platform only counts organic views on the main homepage timeline towards the payout.

Meanwhile, a proposed change by Bier to the revenue sharing programme was vetoed by his boss Elon Musk. The X Product Head had announced that the company was planning to give weight to the impressions from the poster’s home region in order to encourage content that resonates with people in that country.

After a barrage of criticism, Musk had stepped in and said that the policy was on “pause moving forward with this until further consideration.”

How to be eligible for X creator payout?

In order to be eligible for the creator payout, you need to meet X’s monetisation criteria:

• Subscribe to X premium or Premium+
• Have at least 500 followers
• Generate at least 5 million organic impressions over a three month period

In its official blog, X says that impressions from verified users in the home timeline carry more weight in payout. Moreover, the payout is also dependent on who views your content, so views from Premium+ subscribers have more weight than those from Basic subscribers.