You open X, hoping for a spark of insight or a relevant news update. Instead, your feed is a landfill of stolen TikToks, out-of-context Reddit screenshots, and desperate engagement farming. It’s maddening. You’re not alone—one user recently admitted they deleted the app entirely because of the endless flood of stolen video bait clogging their timeline.
So, when X announced a new revenue-sharing model designed to reward “original content,” it sounded like the salvation we’ve been begging for. On paper, it’s a brilliant move to wash the platform clean of content thieves. But if you look under the hood, it’s a trap.
You can’t fix a broken attention economy by paying people to yell louder in a slightly different accent.
The platform claims it wants authenticity and originality. But authenticity isn’t what pays the bills here. Engagement does. To get monetized, creators still need to attract massive audiences and post continuously. The underlying algorithm doesn’t care if your original video is a profound, well-researched documentary or a 10-second clip of you screaming at a wall—as long as people stop scrolling and react.
What happens when you combine a mandate for “originality” with an algorithmic addiction to “engagement at all costs”? You get original clickbait. You get people making their own low-effort, brain-rotting content instead of stealing it from someone else. The platform didn’t kill the engagement farmer; it just forced him to become his own content farm.
We’ve seen this movie before. Whenever a platform tweaks its monetization rules without changing its core incentive structure, creators simply adapt their tactics to exploit the new loophole. If you have to post original content to get a check, but you still need 10 million impressions to make rent, you aren’t going to write a thoughtful essay. You’re going to create highly polarizing, emotionally manipulative, original garbage.
Until the algorithm rewards depth over duration, originality is just a new paint job on a junk car.
If you’re a creator, don’t mistake this policy for an invitation to create deep, thoughtful work. It’s an invitation to manufacture new, sensationalized noise. The feed is about to get a whole lot louder, and a lot less trustworthy.
FAQ
Q: Why wouldn't rewarding original content actually improve the feed?
A: Because the payout still depends on engagement volume. It just incentivizes people to make their own garbage instead of stealing someone else's.
Q: How should creators adapt to this change?
A: Don't pivot to long-form essays. Pivot to high-arousal, original micro-content designed to trigger replies. The algorithm still feeds on outrage and shock.
Q: Is X actually trying to ruin the platform?
A: Not intentionally, but they are trapped by their own business model. They need engagement to sell ads, so they can never truly penalize the clickbait that drives it.