Elon Musk’s Latest Creator Monetization Scheme for Twitter Has Taken A Polarizing Turn

Key takeaways

• Twitter’s new $5 million creator payout fund rewarded some of the highest-profile accounts on Twitter, including Andrew Tate
• The program is designed to reward users with high engagement and replies
• Twitter continues to fight fires on multiple fronts, with a new class action lawsuit and Meta’s Threads offering stiff competition

Did you have ‘Twitter pays Andrew Tate’ on your bingo card this year? Congratulations to those who did — because that’s exactly what happened thanks to Twitter’s new ad-revenue scheme. Social media is in an uproar at the move, but it’s just another day at the office for owner Elon Musk. Let’s get into the details.

Twitter might have gone private, but the tech market has been the darling of Wall Street this year. Want your portfolio to join the excitement? Check out Q.ai’s Emerging Tech Kit. It lets AI do the number-crunching, predicts the potential winners in tech stocks and ETFs, and shuffles the Kit’s holdings to stay on the ball.

Download Q.ai today for access to AI-powered investment strategies.

What’s Twitter’s new monetization scheme?

Twitter’s new ad-revenue sharing program, which is designed to reward Twitter users with high engagement rates and post replies, has allegedly paid out millions to the likes of controversial (to say the least) right-wing figure Andrew Tate and left-wing duo Ed and Brian Krassenstein, among other political figures, anonymous political accounts, podcasters and writers.

In a blog post about the new program, announced at the end of last week, Twitter said the program was “part of our effort to help people earn a living directly on Twitter”. Out of the $5 million pool, the billionaire Musk himself was eligible for a payment but promptly tweeted that he “gave [his] share to the creator payout pool”.

Is Twitter in trouble?

The latest headline adds to the famous bird company’s long list of controversies. The social media conglomerate has been accused of skipping out of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in severance to the several thousand former Twitter employees fired since Elon took over the company. In a $500 million lawsuit against wants Musk to “abide by all terms of the severance plan by paying all terminated employees what they are owed”.

Then there’s Meta’s major new competitor, Threads, which has smashed user sign-up records and has been labelled as the final nail in the coffin for Twitter. The latter responded accordingly with a cease and desist letter to Meta over the app, accusing the company of using Twitter’s trade secrets and hiring former employees to build the app.

The bottom line

Twitter has been for a wild ride since Elon Musk took over. Some ideas, others have adopted — like Meta’s introduction of a subscription service after Twitter did it first, and Reddit following suit with monetizing its API — but then there are decisions like this that leave investors and advertisers worried about the company’s future.

Want your portfolio to join the tech party? You’ve got to try Q.ai’s Emerging Tech Kit. It employs a nifty AI algorithm to do the heavy lifting with the data, predicts the tech stocks and ETFs with bright futures, and switches around the Kit’s holdings to keep you in the winning lane.

Download Q.ai today for access to AI-powered investment strategies.