X Ends Creator Payouts Built on Impressions

SAN FRANCISCO — X has ended its controversial Creator Revenue Sharing program and replaced it with “Original Content Rewards,” a system aimed at limiting engagement farming, plagiarized content and outrage-driven posts. The change took effect on Sept. 7, marking one of the biggest revisions to the platform’s monetization strategy since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company for $44 billion in late 2022.

The new model no longer bases creator payments on raw impressions. Eligible accounts will instead be compensated for unique views of original posts on the Homepage timeline, with engagement from verified Premium subscribers specifically tracked. X described the earlier payout structure as “misaligned” with the health of its ecosystem.

The move follows months of criticism over declining timeline quality. Critics said accounts were increasingly turning to sensationalism, stolen memes and automated rage-bait to trigger payments. X’s decision to display public view counts on every post, introduced shortly after Musk took over, and its direct payments for impressions led some users to describe the platform as a “dopamine simulator.”

Creators entering Original Content Rewards face stricter requirements. They must have at least 500 verified followers and 500,000 verified impressions on the Home timeline during a 90-day period. They must also continue publishing original material. X’s guidelines prohibit copied content, requests for engagement—including prompts to reply or quote-tweet—and “potentially harmful” content.

The policy shift came after a quiet internal dispute about platform quality. Nikita Bier, a prominent tech entrepreneur who served as X’s head of product, spent much of the spring criticizing large “aggregator” accounts that scrape and repost viral videos from TikTok and Reddit. He also publicly called out their payouts before stepping down from X two days before the new program was announced. X did not respond to requests for comment about the policy change or Bier’s departure.

Some creators had already noticed changes in the payout system. The anonymous operator of “ColdHealing,” an account with 280,000 followers that posts uncaptioned TikTok screenshots as an internet culture archive, joined Creator Revenue Sharing when it began. Over three years, the account earned roughly $25,000.

Months before the original program ended, ColdHealing reported a quiet decline in payments for reposted, non-original TikTok material. The change suggested that X had begun testing originality filters behind the scenes. The account’s operator called the financial rewards “mildly corrosive” to the platform’s culture but said that paying creators for impression-based work had established an important industry precedent.

The previous system helped turn provocative accounts into lucrative brands. Robby Lefkowitz created “Murray Hill Guy” to relieve boredom while working at a protein company. Over what he describes as two and a half years, the neighborhood-focused persona developed into a provocative account that earned just under $80,000 through X’s ad-sharing program.

About 20% of Lefkowitz’s posts involved provocative dating commentary. His approach combined local humor with discussions of women’s body counts, physical appearance and contentious dating dynamics, material he said was intended to “get the people going.”

The account broke through in summer 2023 after Lefkowitz posted a viral screenshot of a text exchange. The exchange involved a woman canceling a date over political differences connected to New York politician Zohran Mamdani. It received more than 50 million views, nearly doubled Lefkowitz’s followers and produced a biweekly X payment “in the thousands.”

Lefkowitz worked on the account two to three hours each day and received between $3,000 and $10,000 a month from X, in addition to outside brand deals. One such deal was a $1,500 sponsored post for prediction market Polymarket. He said that “any engagement is good” under X’s monetization framework and acknowledged that, without the financial incentives, he would probably publish much less controversial material.

The strategy also brought personal consequences. Lefkowitz has been doxxed—his private personal details were leaked online—four or five times. The most recent incident occurred in August after he posted a fabricated dating story that used a real woman’s photograph. She responded by publishing his actual name and face.

A machine-learning engineer who uses the pseudonym “Basil” runs an election-forecasting account he started in high school in response to statistician Nate Silver. Basil now earns about $1,000 a month from X, approximately half of his monthly rent, but said he was confused by the way the platform calculated its distribution metrics.

Basil did not change his posting style to pursue algorithmic trends. He nevertheless said the arrival of monetary rewards fundamentally changed how users behaved. “Since monetization really blew up, there are a lot of accounts that are just reposting Reddit or TikTok or rage-bait posts to get people to quote-tweet them,” Basil said.

He considered the additional income useful but described the monetization of impressions as a “net negative” for the platform’s social ecosystem.

X introduced creator payouts in July 2023 as part of Musk’s effort to move the company from an ad-supported business toward a subscription-and-creator-driven ecosystem. Users who subscribed to X Premium, previously known as Twitter Blue, were offered a share of advertising revenue. The goal was to encourage high-quality content and retain leading creators.

For Lefkowitz, the financial arrangement also included payments that ran from thousands of dollars every two weeks to monthly earnings of as much as $10,000, alongside the Polymarket sponsorship. He said the system’s incentives encouraged content he otherwise would have posted less often.

As X moves toward verified, unique views of original material, the platform is attempting to maintain its appeal to professional creators while repairing the user experience. Whether the model can separate monetization from viral outrage remains an open question for X’s engineers and for creators who depend on the platform for their livelihoods.