Social media platforms have, for long, wrestled with the same stubborn problem: how do you pay creators without accidentally rewarding the people who are best at gaming the system? Twitter, then X, has tried more versions of this than most.
Yesterday, the company finally admitted the latest experiment had gone sideways—and chose the nuclear option.
On Friday afternoon, Allegra Jacchia, who leads Creators Product at X, posted a clear-eyed announcement: Revenue Sharing is being phased out. In its place comes Original Content Rewards, a program built from scratch to pay people for bringing something new to the platform rather than simply mastering the art of maximizing impressions.
Today, we’re launching Original Content Rewards.
— Allegra Jacchia (@allegrajacchia) August 7, 2026
The reality is that Revenue Sharing had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned. Creators should be focused on bringing net new content to the platform instead of maximizing payouts. We could have kept adding more… pic.twitter.com/VJIxqlPrjm
The diagnosis was blunt. “Revenue Sharing had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned,” Jacchia wrote.
Creators were optimizing for payouts instead of net-new ideas. Aggregators who reposted, lightly edited, or stitched together other people’s work had figured out the formula. More rules and exceptions weren’t going to fix it. So X decided to start over.
That decision lands with real force. For the past couple of years, Revenue Sharing has been one of the few reliable ways independent voices on X could earn money directly from the platform. It worked—until it didn’t. The loudest complaints, both public and private, centered on accounts that treated the timeline like a content factory: pull a video from elsewhere, slap on a caption, watch the Premium impressions roll in. Original reporters, analysts, and entertainers watched those accounts collect checks while their own more thoughtful work lagged.
Original Content Rewards tries to reverse that dynamic. Eligible creators will earn based on qualified impressions—unique views from Premium subscribers (Basic, Premium, Premium+, or Business) that appear in the Home Timeline and show at least half the post.
Payouts still land every two weeks once you clear the $30 minimum. The first checks under the new system go out August 28th. Existing Revenue Sharing members keep earning through September 7, with final payouts around September 11, then can apply to the new program starting September 8 if they meet the bar.
The bar is higher and more intentional. You need to be 18 or older, hold an active Premium subscription, maintain a Personal or Business account in good standing, have at least 500 verified followers, and generate 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in the previous 90 days (replies don’t count).
Most importantly, you have to regularly post original content. Applications open in Creator Studio; X says it will respond within three business days. One appeal is allowed if you’re rejected. Political and government accounts are out. So are accounts already paused for previous violations.
What counts as original is where the real shift happens. X is drawing a deliberate line. A thread you wrote, a video you filmed, a meme you designed, an analysis that adds genuine perspective—these qualify. Commentary that reacts to the news with expertise or humor counts. Even building on someone else’s post can work, provided you add meaningful transformation: context, narration, creative editing, or insight that makes the post distinctly yours.
What doesn’t count is clearer still. Exact copies, lightly filtered reposts, simple text overlays that just describe what’s already happening, pure aggregations, or material downloaded from elsewhere and re-uploaded without substantial new value—all of it is ineligible. The test X wants creators to ask themselves is simple: would this post still be valuable without my contribution? If the answer is yes, keep working.
The company is also drawing hard lines against the usual tricks. No bots, no artificial engagement farming, no repeatedly begging for likes and follows. Content that is sexually explicit, harmful, purely about monetization coaching, or flagged with a helpful Community Note won’t generate payouts. There’s even a specific rule on AI-generated videos of armed conflict: undisclosed ones trigger a 90-day suspension from the program.
I’ve spoken with creators over the years who felt the old system punished the people doing the harder work—breaking stories, building long-term audiences through expertise, or simply being consistently interesting.
Nikita Bier, the former head of product at X, captured the prevailing mood among many when he replied to Jacchia’s post: “Finally nuked the aggregators.”
That sentiment is widespread, though not universal. Some mid-tier accounts that relied heavily on timely reposts are already calculating whether they can adapt. Others see an opening. If the models improve as promised, the people who actually move conversations forward could finally see their effort reflected in their bank accounts.
The program is available across more than a hundred countries, from the United States and India to Nigeria, Japan, and much of Europe and Latin America. Identity verification and payout setup via Stripe (or X Money where available) carry over for those already enrolled. X reserves the right to tweak or cancel the whole thing, as platforms always do, but the intent is unmistakable.
What remains to be seen is execution. Algorithms still surface the same familiar big accounts more than some would like. Analytics don’t yet break out “qualified Home Timeline impressions” with perfect clarity. And originality is, by nature, harder to measure than raw views. Jacchia herself called this “just the beginning,” promising refinements and higher standards over time.
For now, the message to creators is refreshingly direct. Stop optimizing for the payout formula. Start making the kind of posts that make people open the app in the first place—the ones that inform, entertain, argue, teach, or simply make someone laugh out loud. X is putting real money behind that bet. Whether the platform can actually deliver on it will determine if this reset becomes a genuine turning point or just another chapter in the long, messy story of paying creators online.
The early returns will arrive with the first August 28 payouts. Until then, the timeline belongs to the people willing to create something that didn’t exist before.
