Having earlier admitted that X was “underpaying” content creators, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk on Wednesday hinted that the social media platform was considering increasing payments to compete with YouTube.
Responding to a tweet calling for higher payouts to creators, Musk tagged X head of product Nikita Bier, saying flat out “Ok, let’s do it, but rigorously enforcing no gaming of the system.”
Bier, too, responded promptly, telling Musk that X was “On it.”
“We have a new method that should wipe out 99% fraud,” Bier added, addressing the second part of Musk’s suggestion.
Musk’s tweet saw an enthusiastic response from independent journalist Nick Shirley, who recently made headlines after exposing a daycare centre fraud in Minnesota.
“Yes this would be amazing, X so far hasn’t been able to compete with YouTube Adsense but is a much more effective platform for videos to be shared and seen by the masses without censorship,” Shirley said.
“I’ve been telling my friends for months to be posting on X but they haven’t made the effort because their time is better used (monetarily) on other platforms,” he added.
Several other netizens also jumped in on the conversation, with many hailing it as a “real game changer”.
Users argued that platforms that pay creators well would be the only ones left with authoritative content, with large language models (LLMs) consuming most of the material on the internet.
Musk’s comment sanctioning higher creator payouts comes at a time when digital platforms are competing to retain original, human-created and authoritative content amid an onslaught of AI-generated material.
It also comes months after the Tesla chief stated that X needed to step up its payouts to creators to compete with the likes of YouTube.
What did Musk say earlier?
Earlier this year, in October, Musk had pointed out that X was underpaying its creators.
Commenting on a tweet by Bier, which criticized creator payouts as doing “more harm than good”, Musk corrected his head of product saying, “No, the issue is that we are underpaying and not allocating payment accurately enough.”
The X chief also directly compared the social media platform’s model with that of Google-owned YouTube, flatly saying, “YouTube does a much better job”.
The creator monetization programme on X was introduced after Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the microblogging platform, and in its current state, the programme allows verified users to earn a share of ad revenue based on engagement metrics.
However, despite introducing a payout system for creators, Musk’s platform was called out by many over myriad issues, ranging from inconsistent earnings, delayed payments, and unclear monetization metrics.
The X chief’s latest comment seems intended to address issues faced by creators, while also addressing concerns that higher payouts could lead to abuse of engagement metrics, including artificial, bot-driven amplification of content.
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