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X, the social media platform now owned by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, is shaking up how it pays influencers and creators.<\/p>\n
In announcing the change, the company said it will be winding down its existing Revenue Sharing program and replacing it with something called Original Content Rewards. X will stop accepting new Revenue Sharing participants, while existing participants will continue earning money through September 7.<\/p>\n
Then, starting on September 8, they\u2019ll be able to apply for the new program. Participants will still need to subscribe to one of X\u2019s Premium tiers, and there will be qualifying thresholds for follower count (500 verified followers) and impressions (500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in 90 days), but it sounds like the big change is the emphasis on originality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What counts as original content? X said it can include original reporting and analysis, photos and videos created by the poster, or memes and graphics they\u2019ve designed themselves. Commentary also counts, but \u201cif your content regularly incorporates material created by others, you\u2019ll need to contribute meaningful original value for it to qualify under our original content guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company also included examples of posts that won\u2019t count as original, such as those just copied over from another account, downloaded from one account and re-uploaded to your own, or reposting content \u201cwithout meaningful transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
This announcement follows repeated attempts by X to reform the Revenue Sharing program, for example reducing payments to aggregators and \u201cclickbait\u201d accounts in April. But these efforts have also prompted complaints from popular accounts profiting from the current system; Musk even reversed some of those changes (giving a creator\u2019s local audience more weight when calculating payouts) after a backlash.<\/p>\n
In a post about the new changes, X\u2019s Allegra Jacchia wrote that the existing program \u201chad reached a point where its incentives were misaligned.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCreators should be focused on bringing net new content to the platform instead of maximizing payouts,\u201d she said. \u201cWe could have kept adding more rules and exceptions, but ultimately the better decision was to start fresh and build a program designed from day one to reward originality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacchia added that X be \u201ccontinue refining the program, improving our models, and raising the bar over time.\u201d<\/p>\n