X is scaling back payouts for accounts that overwhelm the timeline with clickbait and rapid reposts, according to head of product Nikita Bier.
He said on Saturday that all aggregator accounts saw their earnings reduced to 60 percent in the current payout cycle, with another 20 percent cut planned for the next round. The platform is also lowering payments for users who repeatedly label posts as “breaking” to grab attention.
Bier explained that the decision came after it became clear that constant reposting and click-driven content were crowding out original creators and making it harder for new voices to grow. He added that while X will not limit speech or reach, it will stop rewarding behavior that manipulates the platform or its users.
His remarks followed complaints from several conservative news accounts that said they had received emails from X informing them of demonetization. One of them, Dominick McGee, who posts as Dom Lucre, said he lost monetization again without explanation despite previously earning income on the platform. McGee, who has 1.6 million followers, has a history of posting conspiracy-related content and said he once made around $55,000 a year from X.
Responding to Bier’s comments, McGee argued that the platform was listening to critics who are not focused on content creation. While he admitted that labeling every post as breaking news could be seen as clickbait, he claimed that only a small portion of his posts used that tactic. Some users challenged that claim, pointing to the frequent use of the term in his recent posts.
Other creators also said they may have been affected by the changes. An account called PoliMath said it received a lower payout than usual and worried it had been mistakenly categorized as an aggregator, even though it does not consider itself one.
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