Creators whose posts on X, formerly called Twitter, have been corrected or amended by the platform’s “community notes” feature will not be able to earn money from them, a change that, according to him, aims to prioritize “accuracy over sensationalism.”
Musk said the change will “maximize the incentive” for users to avoid posting inaccurate or blatantly false information that is then edited by Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking program that allows other users to add context or correct information below a post.
The change was quickly criticized by some users, who said the program is being used for more than just correcting incorrect information, with some asking whether the restrictions would apply to posts that have context added, even if there was nothing necessarily wrong with them. the original publication.
Others said they thought it was a good idea and suggested that users whose posts are frequently subject to edits by the community should be punished further by having the number of fixes displayed publicly on their profile or having their posts shared less. through the X algorithm. Musk had not responded to any user questions as of 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, about two hours after he announced the change. Community Notes were first launched under former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in 2021 as a way to debunk misleading tweets. In July, the platform began paying creators for the first time through a revenue-sharing program that allows them to be compensated for ads that appear in their reply threads.
Users must meet a number of specific criteria to earn money, such as subscribing to Twitter Blue, owning a Stripe account for payment, and having more than 5 million tweet impressions each month. The change in the program comes as the platform faces particular scrutiny over its handling of misinformation since Musk acquired Twitter, which he later rebranded as X, for $44 billion last year.
A change made earlier this month to remove article headlines from links to news shared on to legitimate news articles.
The European Union is investigating Musk and the company for their handling of violent content and misinformation about the war between Israel and Hamas, and recently warned that the platform has the highest prevalence of misinformation and the highest proportion of disinformation posters.