X to Overhaul Creator Monetisation Scheme, Emphasising Original Content

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The social media platform owned by businessman Elon Musk, X, is reportedly set to change its monetisation scheme for payments to influencers and creators.

According to a TechCrunch report on Saturday (8/9) local time, X will gradually phase out the current Revenue Sharing programme and replace it with a programme called Original Content Rewards, with the main change in the new programme being an emphasis on content originality.

X is no longer accepting new participants for the Revenue Sharing programme, while existing participants can still earn income until 7 September. From 8 September, they can apply to join the new programme.

Creators who wish to participate must still subscribe to one of the X Premium packages and meet a number of requirements regarding follower count and impressions.

Other requirements include having 500 verified followers and at least 500,000 Home Timeline views from verified users within 90 days.

Content in the form of comments is still counted. However, X stressed that if a person’s content routinely uses material created by others, the user must provide meaningful original value for the content to meet X’s original content guidelines.

X also provided several examples of content that is not considered original, such as posts that are simply copied from other accounts, content downloaded from one account and re-uploaded to one’s own account, or content reposted without meaningful transformation.

An X representative, Allegra Jacchia, said the current programme “has reached a point where the incentives are no longer aligned”.

Creators, Jacchia continued, should focus on bringing new and original content to the platform, not just chasing larger payouts.

“We could actually keep adding more rules and exceptions. But ultimately, the better decision is to start from scratch and build a programme that from day one is designed to reward originality,” Jacchia said.

The announcement follows a number of X’s efforts to improve the Revenue Sharing programme. One of these was carried out in April by reducing payments to aggregator accounts and accounts deemed to use “clickbait”.

However, these efforts also sparked complaints from a number of popular accounts that benefited from the existing system.

Musk even cancelled some of these changes, including a policy that gave greater weight to creators’ local audiences in calculating payments, after receiving strong backlash from users.