X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will cut revenue sharing for posts that are corrected by Community Notes, owner Elon Musk said on Sunday.
The announcement, yet another chapter in social media’s struggle with fake news, was met with a mix of praise and words of caution, as some users said the new rules would help diminish misinformation while others raised concerns about the process being abused.
“Making a slight change to creator monetization: Any posts that are corrected by [Community Notes] become ineligible for revenue share,” Musk said in a post to X. “The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.”
A revamp of Twitter’s Birdwatch feature, Community Notes is a feature that uses crowd-sourced information to fact-check posts. The notes get attached to posts, offering context and links to give users fuller transparency. X began its ad revenue-sharing program over the summer.
Making a slight change to creator monetization:
Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share.
The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2023
The popular “Mostly Peaceful Memes” account responded to the weekend monetization news by asking, “Don’t you think that community notes will then be weaponized against people to demonetize their content?”
Frequent X poster Ian Miles Cheong reacted with optimism, saying the decision was “Probably good,” adding, “Should fix a lot of the problems with people posting misinformation on purpose.” He also wondered, “What about posts where ‘context’ is added, like on memes and such?”
Another account with hundreds of thousands of followers, “Comfortably Smug,” offered an idea of what to do with the money. “Have the ad revenue go to whoever posted the community note,” the account said. “Incentivizes accuracy.”
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Musk announced the change amid scrutiny of paid-for blue-check accounts being a driving force behind lies or misleading posts, including about big events such as the Israel-Hamas war, that go viral and become lucrative. The European Union even issued a warning to Musk earlier this month, saying that X could face “penalties” for disinformation. There have also been reports in recent days about plummeting monthly users and ad revenue on X.
Ever since Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion roughly one year ago, the technology entrepreneur has overseen several changes to the platform, including rebranding it as X, shaking up its suspension policy, and implementing a new verification process that he described as being essential to fend off bot accounts.
