Social media platforms live and die by the levels of engagement they enjoy. If people are posting, and no one is reacting or responding in any way, then people will post less or go elsewhere. However, rewarding engagement is a risky move, as X is about to find out.
X/Twitter Changes How It’s Paying Creators
X has announced a major change to its Creator Revenue Sharing program. The change potentially means higher payouts for those eligible to receive them, but a higher likelihood ofengagement farmers fishing for reactions.
In a nutshell, payouts will no longer be based on the number of ads that appear in replies to your post (as they have been up to now). Instead, they’ll be based on engagement levels with your content from other X Premium users.
With ads no longer playing into things, X Premium users don’t need to worry about scaring advertisers away anymore. All they need to care about now is how many other Premium users they can tempt into engaging with their content.
With only engagement from other Premium users counting, anyone who doesn’t pay to use X is becoming less and less important to X and its Premium users. Making X more of a two-tier platform than it has ever been.
The new Creator Revenue Sharing program will kick in on November 8, and you may see all the rules and eligibility criteria associated with it inthis support document on the X Help Center.
Engagement Farmers Will Have a Field Day
The most obvious impact that this new system will have is surely to make the problem of engagement farming worse than it already is. When creators are purely getting paid for the level of engagement their posts produce, that will be the only thing on their mind.
Cue open-ended questions everyone can answer, controversial opinions designed to encourage debate, and even outright lies that people will feel forced to counter. None of which is what I personally want to see filling my timeline.
X/Twitter has certainly changed under Elon Musk’s ownership, and I’m not convinced it’s for the better. And I’m afraid that paying people for pure engagement is only going to make the platform even harder to love.
