Elon Musk's app pays customers now. Count on an engagement bait deluge.

Put together to your Twitter — sorry, X — feed to clog up with engagement bait.

In July, proprietor Elon Musk fulfilled his months-old promise to pay customers for his or her tweets — in the event that they joined Twitter Blue (now referred to as X Premium), that’s. Solely paying customers who fulfilled sure eligibility necessities might join the Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program: 15 million tweet impressions within the final three months, and a minimal payout of $50. It is unclear how precisely the fee is measured; Musk said it’s not exactly per impression, however by what number of adverts are proven to different verified customers.

Because the Washington Put up reported, it appeared like Musk first rewarded right-wing influencers with big-enough engagement to warrant five-figure payouts. Different X customers appeared proud of their earnings, although, claiming the return on funding is price it.

This week, Elon Musk lowered the eligibility necessities for creator monetization, making it simpler for X Premium customers to money out on their tweets. Now, X Premium customers solely want 5 million impressions within the final three months, 500 followers, and a minimal payout of $10.

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Whereas the fee measure is murky, the prospect of high-dollar payouts only for tweeting is tempting. You’ll have already seen a spike in immediate tweets or different content material that makes for straightforward replying and quote tweeting (a.okay.a. “engagement bait” or “rage bait”); it might be due to the motivation to receives a commission to your eyeballs. Some X customers have definitely observed:

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X already rewards those that publish rage bait — as does social media on the whole — and for the platforms, this turns anger into {dollars} as customers cannot cease themselves from watching or commenting. This creator monetization change will probably deliver extra of the identical, making X much more of a cesspool than it already is. If you happen to see a blue verify account ask an asinine query: bait. If you happen to see a blue verify account posting apparent misinformation: bait. If you happen to see a non-blue verify account posting these items, it might be an X Premium person who hid their blue verify.

How precisely this performs out stays to be seen, but when the primary few days are any indication, non-paying (and non-paid) X customers will proceed to be annoyed by the platform.