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
This update seems to be an incentive for accounts with many followers not to spread misinformation that later goes viral. Musk stated, “The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy rather than sensationalism.” X has also begun requiring community note contributors to cite their sources in fact checks.
This change comes after concerns from independent researchers, fact-checkers and journalists who have warned that X has become a hub for disinformation and extremism since Musk bought the site a year ago, especially amid the unrest in Israel and Gaza and Russia and Ukraine.
European Union officials have even opened an investigation into the way the company handles war-related disinformation. Following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter a year ago, the company fired teams responsible for curating and promoting credible tweets about breaking news events and removed tools for flagging misinformation on the app. Instead, the company has relied on its crowdsourced fact-checking tool, Community Notes.
However, critics have pointed out that community notes are subject to manipulation and that user-contributed fact checks often cannot keep up with the large number of viral falsehoods, particularly those promoted by verified accounts.
In accordance with a NewsGuard analysis a nonprofit that tracks the spread of disinformation, found that 74% of the most viral posts on X promoting disinformation about the war between Israel and Hamas are powered by verified X accounts.
Will X survive Musk’s changes?
One year since the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, the social network has undergone numerous changes that have not necessarily been favorable, as they have had a harsh impact on the worth of the company.
Among the main changes There are the massive layoffs that the company has suffered, since just during the first few hours of taking over the company, Musk fired nearly 5,000 people from different important areas of the company. From senior executives, such as CEO Parag Agrawat, as well as engineers from different sectors important to the development of the platform.
At the same time, in May, he announced the arrival of Linda Yaccarino as CEO of the platform to replace Musk in the tasks of directing the social network and the most important change was the name, since it is no longer called “Twitter” but “ “X.”