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X, formerly Twitter, lowers requirements for its ad-revenue sharing program…with a catch

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Elon Musk celebrating with the new X logo and a background of Twitter bird logo upside-down
Image Credits: Collage: TechCrunch / Getty Images

Elon Musk–owned social network X, formerly Twitter, said late Thursday that it is lowering requirements for its creator payout program. The company said that the creators who have garnered 5 million impressions in the last three months will be eligible for ad revenue sharing — a third of the previous 15 million impression requirement.

Creators will be able to withdraw as low as $10 instead of $50, the company said. Users still need to be verified and must have at least 500 followers to qualify for payouts.

Shortly after the announcement, Musk added a stipulation, stating that only impressions from verified accounts would be considered for ad-revenue sharing. “Scammers will otherwise use bots to spam views to infinity,” he cautioned.

This change will significantly reduce the pool of money available to creators through this program, however.

Currently, X doesn’t offer its users a way to check their posts’ “verified views.” It is unclear how creators will be able to find how many views or impressions their posts received from verified users.

The company started paying some eligible creators in July, and later in the month, it opened up the program to verified creators globally. Musk said in June that the first block of creator payouts will amount to nearly $5 million.

X said last week that due to a surge in sign-ups, the scheduled payout for July 31 experienced a delay.

Earlier in the week, X announced new sensitivity settings for advertisers to let them choose levels like “Relaxed,” “Standard,” and “Conservative.” These levels will decide what kind of content can appear adjacent to their ads. This is an expansion of the social media company’s partnership with Integral Ad Science (IAS), which it started working with in January to tell marketers if their ad is placed around inappropriate content.

On Thursday, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a Spaces conversation that the company is close to “breakeven.” In her first interview after taking over the executive seat at the company, Yaccarino also revealed that X was working on a feature to let users video call each other.

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