Photo credit: Giorgio Trovato
After Twitter started paying Blue subscribers under a revenue-sharing program last week, Musk is streamlining the program.
With the introduction of threads, Twitter is feeling the competition to retain content creators on the platform. The problem is that the revenue share requirements outlined by Twitter mean that some people are eligible but haven’t received any money.
Eligible to participate in the program are Twitter Blue subscribers who have achieved five million Tweet impressions in the last three months. Musk paid out $5 million in the first round, with cumulative payments beginning in February. According to Twitter, the revenue-sharing model consists only of ads that appear in tweet replies and not in the main feed.
Many Twitter Blue verified creators who were not eligible have been disqualified due to an old Twitter policy that states that profiles containing “animals or fictional characters” are not eligible for a subscription. Responding to users concerned about the policy, Musk tweeted, “Consider this silly policy deleted effective immediately.” reads. Musk has also stated that he wants to share revenue from profile page views with users, which would double payouts.
“Soon, we’ll be sharing ad revenue from profile page views, which should roughly double payouts,” Musk told one person. “Note that only views from verified users are counted, otherwise it’s trivial for a bot to manipulate the number of views,” he says continues. Musk has expressed concern that bots collect free data from Twitter, which is used to train large language models like ChatGPT. Both Twitter and Threads have introduced rate caps in recent weeks to combat so-called spam attacks.
“Spam attacks have increased, so we need to be more strict about things like rate limits, which will result in active people becoming more unintentionally restricted,” Adam Mosseri wrote in a thread. “If you’re affected by these safeguards, let us know.” Musk said in response to user complaints on Twitter increased tariff limits for Twitter Blue verified users by 50% over the weekend.