When a platform itself admits it was rewarding the wrong things, it is worth reading carefully what exactly it is admitting. X is shutting down its existing revenue-sharing programme and replacing it with a new one called Original Content Rewards. The explanation came from Allegra Yakia at the company: the old programme „reached a point where the incentives were misaligned”.

Translated: for years the platform paid people who took other people's content, repackaged it and collected views. That is nobody's discovery from yesterday - it was visible on every timeline. The difference is that it is now being said by the company that wrote the rules.

The deadlines are short. New entrants are no longer accepted into the old programme, existing ones earn until 7 September, and from 8 September applications open for the new one. The entry threshold: 500 verified followers and 500,000 views from verified users in the initial 90-day review. Plus a subscription to one of X's paid tiers - that part does not change, of course.

Who decides what counts as original

The definition is broad: your own reporting and analysis, photos and videos made by the poster, memes and graphics they designed themselves. Commentary counts too - but, the terms state, „if the content regularly includes material created by others, you will need to contribute significant original value”. What „significant original value” means is defined nowhere, and it is precisely that sentence which decides whether somebody gets paid.

This is not the first attempt. In April the platform already cut payouts to aggregator accounts and to accounts with content that exists only for the click. Popular accounts that live off that system pushed back, and Elon Musk reversed part of the changes - for example, again giving more weight to a creator's home audience in the calculation. That is an important fact for anyone now planning to build around the new rules: this system has already buckled under pressure once.

Yakia added that the programme will keep being adjusted and that the bar will rise over time. That sounds reasonable when you read it, and sounds different when you realise what it means - the rules somebody is planning their income around will change while they work. Anybody producing content for a platform they do not control knows this scene: the income depends on an algorithm you cannot see, by a criterion that can change on Monday. Does it make sense to build a craft on a foundation like that?