X replaces revenue sharing with Original Content Rewards

X, the social media platform now owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is retiring its Revenue Sharing program in favor of a new initiative called Original Content Rewards, a shift designed to prioritize original posts over content that simply aggregates or re-shares material from elsewhere.

The company said it will stop accepting new Revenue Sharing participants immediately, while existing participants can keep earning through September 7. On September 8, creators can apply for the new program.

What creators need to qualify

To take part in Original Content Rewards, creators must subscribe to one of X’s Premium tiers and meet two thresholds:

• 500 verified followers
• 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users within 90 days

What counts as original content

X said original content includes original reporting and analysis, photos and videos created by the poster, and memes or graphics designed by the creator. Commentary also qualifies, but if your content regularly incorporates material created by others, you’ll need to add meaningful original value to meet the guidelines.

Posts that won’t qualify include content copied from another account, videos or images downloaded from one account and re-uploaded to your own, or reposts without meaningful transformation.

Why X made the change

The move follows repeated attempts to reform Revenue Sharing. In April, X reduced payments to aggregators and clickbait accounts, but that sparked complaints from popular accounts that profit from the current system. Musk later reversed some of those changes, including giving a creator’s local audience more weight when calculating payouts, after backlash.

In a post about the new program, X’s Allegra Jacchia said the existing program “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,” she said. “We could have kept adding more rules and exceptions, but ultimately the better decision was to start fresh and build a program designed from day one to reward originality.”

Jacchia added that X will keep refining the program, improving its models, and raising the bar over time.