In what may be a perfect summary of Elon Musk’s erratic management approach at the app, X yesterday announced, then retracted, a planned update to its creator monetization program which would have disincentivized foreign agitator accounts from posting about political topics purely to generate more engagement.
In an X post yesterday, Nikita Bier, the platform’s head of product, said that X would be updating its revenue share incentives in order to give more weight to impressions from each user’s home region.
As explained by Bier: “While we appreciate everyone’s opinion on American politics, we hope this will disincentivize gaming the attention of U.S. or Japanese accounts and instead, drive diverse conversations on the platform.”
Bier’s reference here is to the breadth of non-U.S.-based users who post about American politics, in order to spark more engagement with their updates.
Indeed, when X launched location listings in its profile information panels last November, it revealed that some of the most followed accounts that post about U..S. politics in the app are actually foreign-based users seeking to capitalize on the division and angst within the U.S. political landscape.
Bier further noted that he hoped X’s renewed approach to regional engagement would prompt creators to start building an audience locally, and said that “X will be a much richer community when there’s relevant posts for people in all parts of the world.”
A noble, and logical strategy, at least from a certain perspective. But X users set to be impacted by a reduction in their reach as a result, and thus, their monetization potential, were quick to voice their concerns with the plan.
Several highly followed accounts posted their complaints about the proposed update on X, noting that they would have to significantly change their content strategy as a result. Musk got wind of the rising dissent, and hours after Bier’s announcement, he nixed the concept entirely, noting that X would “pause moving forward with this until further consideration.”
Which is amazing, not so much for the about turn, which could possibly have been based on favoritism, with some of the accounts that Musk regularly interacts with among those raising their concerns. But more so from an operational standpoint: How does a change of this magnitude, that will impact thousands of users, get to the precipice of going live, at the announcement stage of the launch process, without being checked off and tested by all the relevant people?
As noted, this is seemingly the way of all things within Musk’s agile approach.
So the monetization update has now been shelved, and it seems unlikely that it’s going to return. But would it actually make sense?
Would enacting disincentives to limit posts about foreign politics actually reduce the amount of misinformation and rage-bait in the app, and make it a more trustworthy, reliable platform for information?
In another post, Bier said: “For a random person signing up in France: Their very first timeline will likely include Trump ragebait and Silicon Valley chatter. We can’t continue to incentivize the same kind of posts forever.”
And that’s true. The presence of U.S. political chatter seemingly outweighs discussion of other topics on X, with various research reports finding that the platform is regularly flooded with misinformation about the latest political news and events.
Which X has acknowledged. Earlier this month, following a report from Wired that X has been inundated with misinformation since the beginning of the Iran war, X announced it would revise its creator revenue share policies to prevent manipulation.
Which is seemingly what led to the planned update that Musk has cut it off, thus ending whatever work had already been done on the project.
In the end, the announcement, then retraction, makes it seem as though there’s a level of miscommunication between Musk and Bier on the best way forward. This also underlines the view that Musk would prefer to host content that supports his ideological perspective, whether it’s true or not.
Overall, it’s not a good look for the app, though it has raised an interesting consideration as to the incentives behind information pushes, as well as how platforms potentially fuel their growth.
