X owner Elon Musk has fulfilled a months-old promise to pay users who join Twitter Blue (now X Premium).
The revenue-sharing program for creators was initially only available to users who met the following conditions: 15 million tweet impressions in the last three months and a minimum payment of $50.
Last week, however, Musk revised the monetization conditions for creators, making it easier for X Premium users to monetize posts. Now, X Premium users only need 5 million impressions in the last three months, 500 followers and a minimum payment of $10.
Now, even more people can get paid to post!
We’ve lowered the eligibility threshold for ads revenue sharing from 15M to 5M impressions within the last 3 months. We’ve also lowered the minimum payout threshold from $50 to $10.
Sign up for a Premium subscription to get access.
— Support (@Support) August 10, 2023
Yes, X has started paying, but Musk seems to have rewarded influencers with good engagement first. According to the Washington Post, right-wing Twitter influencers are the first in Elon Musk’s revenue model. On the other hand, other X subscribers also seem satisfied with their earnings.
Musk has said that the payout is measured by how many ads are shown to other verified users, not exactly per impression. Although the payout metric is a bit vague, getting paid for a shared post is appealing to users.
Some users have already noticed the change in their X streams
since twitter started paying blue checks to engagement farm, all the $8 accounts are posting stuff like "what would you do if you woke up and suddenly had 3 butt cheeks"
— Rob DenBleyker (@RobDenBleyker) August 11, 2023
Because of the revenue sharing program that makes money on your eyeballs, you may have come across some of the methods used to ‘boost engagement’ on social media;
Tweets with questions,
In content that enables easy replying and quoting,
You may have seen an increase in ‘rage bait’ posts, which can be translated as ‘clickbait’ and trolling.
As with all social platforms in general, X already rewards rage bait posts and turns the anger of users who can’t stop themselves from commenting into dollars.
However, this new revenue model is likely to bring with it much more and turn X into a cesspool.
For example;
You see a blue-ticked account asking a nonsensical question: Bait.
If you see an account with a blue tick sharing blatantly false information: Decoy.
If you see a non-blue-ticked account sharing them, it could be a Premium X user hiding their blue tick, beware!
We’ll see exactly how this plays out, but it’s clear from the first few days that non-paying (and non-paying) X users will continue to be frustrated.
