Earlier this week saw Twitter announce that it’s going to begin sharing ad revenue with content creators on the platform. According to the Twitter Help Center, this is part of their efforts to “help people earn a living directly on Twitter”. The feature is available in countries where Stripe supports payouts, and has rolled out to “an initial group who will be invited to accept payment”. Here’s the kicker: to be eligible you have to be either subscribed to Twitter Blue or Verified Organisations, and have at least 5 million impressions on your posts for each of the previous three months. You also have to pass human review for Creator Monetisation Standards, which are a list of fairly standard rules including having a fully completed profile, being older than 18, not having violated Twitter rules, etc.
What’s more interesting is the people who have already benefited and announced how much they’ve earned: it appears to be mostly high-profile, far-right influencers, including Ian Miles Cheong, Benny Johnson, and Ashley St. Claire. Andrew Tate, possibly the most notorious right-wing grifter in the internet sphere and was recently released from jail on rape and human trafficking chargers, posted that he was paid over $20,000 by Twitter. Not every right-wing Twitter influencer is part of the program – notably, Chaya Raichik of @libsoftiktok doesn’t seem to be part of the program just yet – but far-right influencers seem to have been prioritised in the rolling out of this scheme. Many non-political accounts appear to have been left out.
It’s disappointing, but not surprising. This is likely in response to everybody jumping ship to Threads. Starting to share advertising revenue with creators is a last-ditch attempt to retain the people that drive the most engagement: right-wingers. People like Andrew Tate and Ian Miles Cheong get tons of engagement, not necessarily because people agree with them, but because they rage-bait. Their content is geared towards controversy, because the more angry people are at them, the more notorious they become. Twitter has stated that revenue will be based on a calculation of replies and monthly impressions, which directly incentivises people to tweet the most controversial things possible in order to farm for clicks and replies. Most people enjoy drama far more than they do informational content, and rage-baiting scratches that itch.
I’m not even sure how long this can last – Musk is already struggling with retaining ad revenue after advertisers pulled out of the website in droves. To the Washington Post, a former Twitter executive said, “any kind of content monetization we’ve done in the past was based on a revenue model. This just feels pulled out of thin air for a specific subset of creators that he wanted to placate.” The former executive also claimed that Twitter’s metrics were fake, saying, “It’s all completely made up. It really feels like they’re arbitrarily writing checks to people they like, which is not a sustainable creator strategy.”
There’s only so much you can do to retain users, especially when your platform is quickly becoming a cesspool of right-wing, misogynistic, transphobic content. Twitter hates Musk and what he stands for, which is why everybody is so eager to leave when offered viable alternatives. This new monetisation is only going to exacerbate that, for however long it lasts – rewarding the worst Twitter users with payment can only drive people away faster. I’m anti-Threads, but I’m even more anti-giving right-wing grifters your money through engagement. Remember, if you see a right-wing influencer looking for attention and clicks, don’t respond to them, and don’t engage. The only way to ensure you don’t give them money is to block them, depriving them of that altogether. Until Musk’s newest misguided scheme blows up in his face, that’s really all we can do.