X posts corrected by Community Notes will not get paid for reach, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the CTO of X (formerly Twitter), announced on Sunday that posts containing misinformation on the platform will now be considered “ineligible for revenue share.” This move is aimed at promoting accuracy over sensationalism within the platform’s content. X posts that are corrected by Community Notes, the platform’s crowd-sourced fact-checking system, will become “ineligible for revenue share”. The idea behind this change is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism. Musk also noted that any attempts to “weaponize Community Notes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious because all code and data is open source”. Also Read: Elon Musk Reveals Big Gaming Plans: xAI To Launch ‘AI-Generated Game’ By 2026

“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 wrote in an X post. Also Read: Asus ROG Xbox Ally, ROG Xbox Ally X Gaming Handhelds Launched In India: Price, Features, Availability

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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

Anybody can sign up to contribute to Community Notes. Contribution involves proposing a short note of context to any post by including an important omission or correcting an error. Other users from “different points of view” can then rate the helpfulness of the note or any other notes that are suggested. The notes that win the most consensus are the ones that surface at the top.

This move is part of a series of updates aimed at creating more accuracy on the platform, particularly as X struggles to keep up with the misinformation around the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukarine war and other crises unfolding around the world. For Instance, an update that allows fact-checks to gather ratings more quickly could allow worthwhile and accurate notes to go live at a faster pace; and a scaled-up feature that sends notifications to people whose activity had later received a fact-check could encourage those who spread misinformation or disinformation to remove posts or edit them to provide more context.

Today’s announcement could curtail the acceleration of sensationalist information contributed by creators, who have financial incentives to take part in the reaction economy. But this measure, along with other recent updates, can also be seen as a mere stopgap that may not ultimately stem the tide of misinformation.

Meanwhile, Australia’s eSafety commissioner has fined Elon Musk-run X (formerly Twitter) AUD 610,500 (over $380,000) for failing to disclose information about how it detects, removes and prevents child sexual abuse material.