Social media platform X quickly reversed its decision on new rules for creator monetization, which centered on payouts based on engagement from a creator’s local audience.
Late Tuesday, X’s Head of Product Nikita Bier announced that, starting Thursday, the platform would alter its payout policy, prioritizing impressions from the poster’s region. His reasoning was to discourage algorithm manipulation by posting about the U.S. or Japan to capture the attention of these larger audiences.
“We will be giving more weight to impressions from your home region—to encourage content that resonates with people in your country, in neighboring countries and people who speak your language,” Bier wrote on X.
“While we appreciate everyone’s opinion on American politics, we hope this will disincentivize gaming the attention of US or Japanese accounts and instead, drive diverse conversations on the platform. We invite creators to start building an audience locally. X will be a much richer community when there are relevant posts for people in all parts of the world.”
This sparked criticism from users worldwide who said they posted on various topics in languages such as English to attract more readership because their home country’s X usage was relatively small.
Hours after the announcement, Elon Musk replied to a user saying the company will “pause moving forward with this until further consideration,” effectively halting the changes.
X has previously altered how account information is displayed to prevent misinformation. Last November, it introduced new profile information to indicate the country or region an account is based out of, aiming to identify authentic accounts versus bad actors spreading misinformation, particularly political.
The new creator payout feature seemed to have similar motivations, as accounts might post about specific regions to gain attention. However, this change would have affected not just political accounts but also those discussing sports, fashion, movies, or tech worldwide.
Earlier this year, X updated its rules to suspend accounts from creator payouts for 90 days if they post misleading AI-generated content about war without disclosure. The company declared it would use its own AI tools and community notes to identify such posts. Last month, Wired reported that X became a hotspot for misinformation after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, with AI-generated videos and video game clips being shared as actual war footage.