Twitter / X Suspends Ad Revenue Sharing for Posts Containing Misinformation

Elon Musk announced on Sunday that posts on X that are corrected by the platform's crowd-sourced fact-checking system, Community Notes, will no longer be eligible for revenue sharing.

The intention behind this move is to prioritize accuracy over sensationalism, incentivizing users to provide more factual content. Musk emphasized the transparency of the process, stating that attempts to misuse Community Notes to demonetize individuals will be readily apparent, as all the code and data involved is open source.

Anyone can participate in Community Notes by suggesting short notes of context to correct errors or provide missing information in posts.

Other users with different perspectives can then rate the helpfulness of these notes, and the most consensual notes rise to the top.

This change is part of a broader effort to enhance accuracy on the platform, particularly in the face of misinformation surrounding events like the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Earlier in October, X introduced updates to improve accuracy through Community Notes, including the ability for fact-checks to receive ratings more swiftly and notifying users whose content has been fact-checked.

While this move may help reduce the spread of sensationalist information, especially by content creators driven by financial incentives, its effectiveness in curbing misinformation during ongoing events like the Israel-Hamas conflict remains to be seen. X Premium subscribers, who are eligible to be creators, make up less than 1% of the platform's over 500 million monthly active users.

As for the demographics of Community Notes contributors, X has not disclosed detailed information, but there are over 100,000 contributors from 44 countries, according to X CEO Linda Yaccarino's October statement.