Elon Musk Announces X's End Of Payments For Misinformation Tweets

X has announced that it will no longer compensate creators for tweets that spread false information.

Elon Musk stated that this modification is a part of the program's "slight change" in monetization. X's revenue-sharing programme will no longer pay out for tweets that have been verified by community notes.

With this change, the motivation for well-known accounts to disseminate false information online should be lessened, and accuracy should be prioritised over sensationalism.

Making a slight change to creator monetization:

Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share.

The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2023

Furthermore, X recently enforced the need that contributors to community notes provide citations for their sources in fact checks.

This modification is the result of worries expressed by fact-checkers, researchers, and journalists over the spread of false information on X that becomes viral, especially in light of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Authorities from the European Union have opened an inquiry into the company's handling of false information about the conflict.

Following Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter almost a year ago, the firm has implemented several changes, including the dismissal of teams in charge of selecting credible tweets regarding breaking news and the removal of facilities for reporting false material.

Twitter has instead relied on community notes, a method for fact-checking submitted by users.

Critics have noted that user-contributed fact checks sometimes fail to keep up with the volume of viral lies, especially those supported by verified accounts, and that community notes are susceptible to manipulation. 

According to a recent NewsGuard research, "verified" X accounts are mostly responsible for a sizable share of the most viral posts on X that disseminate false information concerning the Israel-Hamas War.

High-profile accounts that routinely have their tweets marked as "community noted" have criticised the decision to prevent compensation for certain messages. 

Elon Musk promised that any attempt to influence @CommunityNotes in order to demonetize users would be easily detected but the announcement did not specify how one would respond to such manipulation. Requests for more comments from X were met with silence.