On August 7, X officially closed new registrations for the Creator Revenue Sharing program; revenue shares for existing participants will end on September 7, with the final payment expected to arrive by September 11.
Instead, a brand-new program—Original Content Rewards—is now open for applications starting September 8. All participants from the previous program must reapply; there is no automatic transition.
X officially stated plainly in its announcement: the previous incentive program "has gone off track"; creators should focus on bringing net new content to the platform rather than maximizing their personal income.
In simple terms, the old incentive system supported too many content reposters, AI-generated posts, and engagement-bait accounts, leaving users exploited—so X has decided to start over from scratch.
What exactly has changed between the old and new plans?
The logic of the old program was simple: as long as your post received enough impressions and had ads in the comments section, you would earn a payout. Whether your content was an original in-depth analysis or simply a watermark-added repost from TikTok, the system treated them all the same. This mechanism gave rise to countless “repost-to-earn” accounts and turned AI-generated bulk content into a business.
The new plan has undergone fundamental adjustments at three levels.
What are you calculating?
The old plan calculated income based on ad revenue sharing; the new plan rewards based on "qualified impressions." A qualified impression is strictly defined as: your post being viewed by a Premium paying user in the homepage feed, with at least 50% of the post visible. Each user counts as only one impression per post. Paid promotions, manual spamming, and fraudulent impressions are not counted.
What content qualifies?
The new program clearly defines "original content" as material created, filmed, designed, or produced by you personally, reflecting your own voice, perspective, or expertise. Comments, analyses, and interpretations of news events qualify as original, as long as your contribution is the primary source of value in the post.
The following are not considered original: directly copying and uploading others' content; downloading from X or other platforms and re-uploading; making minor modifications such as adding watermarks, changing filters, adjusting speed, or adding borders; simply reposting or compiling content without substantive insights.
Who can participate?
Entry requirements have both decreased and increased. The impression requirement has been lowered from the previous program’s high threshold to 500,000 paid user homepage impressions over the past 90 days, and the follower requirement has been reduced to 500 verified followers, making entry more accessible. However, a new review requirement for a history of original content has been added, along with an ongoing compliance mechanism: violations may result in suspension or permanent removal from the program, and reapplication is prohibited for 90 days after a failed appeal.
Particularly notable: Posting AI-generated videos related to war without disclosing AI use will result in a 90-day suspension for the first violation and permanent removal for any subsequent offense.
A few practical tips for creators
Immediately check whether your account meets the new thresholds: 500 verified followers and 500,000 premium user homepage impressions are mandatory requirements. If you're close, the next month is your window to push harder. Note: Impressions in the reply section do not count.
Starting now, consciously build an “original content record.” The review of your new application will examine your posting history. If 90% or more of your past posts were reposts or reuploads, your application is unlikely to be approved. You have one month, until September 8, to adjust your content structure.
Do not post interactive phishing messages requesting likes, shares, or follows. The ongoing compliance terms of the new program explicitly prohibit "soliciting engagements"—repeatedly asking users to interact may result in removal from the program.
Understand how the "Qualified Display Volume" is calculated.
Only posts by creators that appear in the homepage feed to Premium users count toward earnings. This means creators’ income is directly tied to the number of X Premium subscribers. The more paying users X has, the larger the creator earnings pool. This also explains why X made this adjustment: the old plan relied on ad revenue sharing, while the new plan is fundamentally designed to incentivize creators to drive more users to subscribe to Premium.
If your primary content format consists of comments and analysis (a category that includes many crypto KOLs), don’t worry about being “not original enough.” X’s policy document explicitly states that analysis, interpretation, and commentary on news events qualify as original content. It’s fine to use others’ material—the key is that your judgment and insights are the main value of your post.
What is X betting on?
Looking at it from a step back, the underlying business logic behind this adjustment is not complicated.
The old plan distributed revenue to creators based on advertising income, requiring X to continuously sell more ads to support an increasing number of creators, while the platform’s ad revenue has remained under pressure since Musk’s acquisition. The new plan shifts the payment foundation from ad revenue sharing to impressions from Premium users, effectively turning creators into promoters of Premium subscriptions: the better your content, the more Premium users you attract, the more you earn—and the more subscription revenue X generates.
This follows the same logic as OpenAI offering ChatGPT for free: acquire users at the platform level and monetize through the ecosystem. X’s “platform tax” is the Premium subscription fee.
Whether the new initiative can truly solve the problems of content scraping and AI content farms depends on the accuracy of X’s originality detection system. If the review process remains limited to manual sampling, scammers can simply refine their disguises to continue exploiting the system. However, if X uses its own Grok model for automated originality detection, the accuracy could be surprisingly high—after all, X has access to the timestamp of nearly every post, making it clear who posted first and who posted later, with the data readily available.
Applications open on September 8, giving crypto and AI creators a one-month window to adjust their content strategies.