X replaces creator payout program with Original Content Rewards

X, the social media platform now owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is shaking up how it pays influencers and creators. The company said it will wind down its existing Revenue Sharing program and replace it with a new one called Original Content Rewards. X will stop accepting new Revenue Sharing participants immediately, while current participants keep earning under the old program through September 7. Starting September 8, creators will be able to apply for the new program.

Participants in Original Content Rewards will still need to subscribe to one of X’s Premium tiers, and must meet qualifying thresholds of 500 verified followers and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users within 90 days. The biggest change, it seems, is a new emphasis on originality. X said qualifying content can include original reporting and analysis, photos and videos the poster created themselves, or memes and graphics they designed — and that commentary counts too, but content that regularly incorporates material made by others will need to add meaningful original value to qualify. X also gave examples of what won’t count: posts copied over from another account, content downloaded from one account and re-uploaded to another, or reposts that don’t meaningfully transform the original.

The change follows repeated attempts by X to reform Revenue Sharing, including reducing payments to aggregators and “clickbait” accounts in April. Those efforts drew complaints from popular accounts that were profiting under the existing system, and Musk reversed some of the changes — giving a creator’s local audience more weight in payout calculations — after the backlash.

In a post announcing the new program, X’s Allegra Jacchia wrote that the existing system “had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned.” She said creators should focus on bringing net-new content to the platform rather than maximizing payouts, and that rather than keep layering on rules and exceptions, X decided to start fresh with a program built from the ground up to reward originality. Jacchia added that the company plans to keep refining the program, improving its models, and raising the bar over time.

Why it matters

Tying creator payouts directly to originality checks — rather than raw engagement — is X’s clearest signal yet that it wants to shift its incentive structure away from the aggregator and repost accounts that have thrived on the platform’s reach-based rewards.