X Sues, Changing How Creators Earn – What Does This Mean?
X, formerly Twitter, has taken legal action against a network of accounts accused of manipulating its previous creator payout system. The lawsuit alleges that Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa used coordinated tactics to fake engagement, defrauding the platform of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This move highlights X's recent shift in how it rewards content creators, moving away from engagement farming towards valuing original ideas and genuine contributions. The platform is now emphasizing quality over quantity, aiming to foster a healthier creator environment.
X has filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England and Wales, targeting six accounts, including @Vivek4real_ and @Bitcoin_Teddy. The company claims these accounts operated as a single, coordinated effort to falsely boost engagement, specifically by posting identical 'BREAKING' crypto headlines seconds apart, then using other handles to like, reply to, and repost the content. This created a misleading impression of widespread interaction.
This alleged scheme, which X says pulled in at least £207,384 (about $278,000) for the accused, exploited X’s former Creator Revenue Sharing program. Launched in mid-2023, this program paid creators based purely on how much engagement their posts received. The system, unfortunately, inadvertently encouraged the proliferation of recycled content, copy-pasted posts, and replies designed solely to farm reactions, often from paying subscribers. X had attempted several fixes to this model, including adjustments to aggregator payouts and regional weighting changes, but ultimately retired the program.
Now, X has replaced it with Original Content Rewards, which went live on September 8. This new system is much stricter, focusing payouts only on 'qualified impressions'—unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible. Crucially, replies no longer count towards eligibility, and copied posts, reuploaded media, or reposts without significant original changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, a senior product manager, stated that the goal is to reward creators for original ideas and perspectives, not for gaming the system. The lawsuit, therefore, appears to be X's strong statement against past abuses and a clear signal of its commitment to the new, originality-focused model.