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News & Commentary

Twitter Pays Out Thousands of Dollars to a Select Group of Users, Citing New ‘Monetization’ Scheme

The money appears to have disproportionately gone to accounts that flatter Musk, while many big name Covid dissidents, Substack writers, Musk critics, and others have thus far been excluded completely

Decensored News
Jul 15, 2023

A number of Twitter users woke up to a “surprise” on Thursday: A notice that thousands of dollars – in some cases, tens of thousands – are about to hit their Stripe accounts, courtesy of Twitter.

It’s supposedly part of their new “Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program” whose “launch” Twitter announced this week.

“It makes a lot of cents to create here!” said Twitter’s new WEF-connected CEO Linda Yaccarino in a tweet about the announcement, adding a “bag of money” emoji.

Among the most highly paid accounts (according to their own self-reporting) are:

  • Internet Hall of Fame (@InternetH0F) – $103K
  • Billy Marcus (@BillyM2k) – $37K
  • Brian Krassenstein (@krasseinstein) – $24K
  • Andrew Tate (@corbratate) – $20K
  • Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) – $16K
  • Zuby (@zubymusic) – $12K
  • Kanekoa The Great (@KanekoaTheGreat) – $12K
  • Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) – $7K
  • Rogan O’Handley (@DC_Draino) – $7K
  • Tim Pool (@timcast) – $6K
  • Whole Mars Catalogue (@wholemarsblog) – $6K

Many other accounts that appear to be “qualified” based on Twitter’s stated criteria say that they’ve received $0, however.

“Happy for the people that got paid,” said independent writer Texas Lindsay, “but wondering how this works when many like myself and others who’s tweets garnered nearly a 100 million views in a month didn’t receive a dime.”

“All of the independent reporters I know didn’t receive a payout due to previous bans from Twitter 1.0 for anti-regime reporting,” wrote Jordan Schachtel, another popular journalist who publishes on Substack. “Not ideal.”

Some other examples, with quotes:

  • Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis: “@KanekoaTheGreat just received $12,000 from @Twitter for his influence. I have 5 times the reach and I received $0. @elonmusk is this your social credit system in action?” (source)
  • Sam Husseini: “Meanwhile ‘New’ Twitter won’t let some of us make a dime here AND are shadowbanning us for our editorial content AND for trying to make money off our [Substack publications].” (source)
  • The Last American Vagabond: “Despite all the ads given on TLAV content on Twitter & having the blue check, TLAV will not be receiving any funds from Twitter, since they are pretending I do not have the check, as ridiculous as that is. I have emailed to no avail. This feels intentional. Hard to say for sure.” (source)

Meanwhile, Schachtel pointed out that Billy Marcus – one of the aforementioned highest paid accounts (that we know of) – posts lots of “stolen uncredited videos and clickbait,” despite the former supposedly being against the “Creator Monetization Standards,” which say in part:

Unowned or unlicensed content: you must not monetize content you do not have the rights to monetize. If you share third party content (as background audio, for example, in a video you post to your subscribers), you must have the appropriate legal rights to do so.

That’s not all that Marcus posts, however:

This seems to be a major “through line” for most if not all of the highest paid accounts: they tend to be people who have repeatedly praised Musk, if not behaved in a downright sycophantic manner toward him:

On the flip side, many of the users who were “mysteriously” excluded are among the better-known “Covid dissidents” and Elon Musk critics.

“The new Twitter payment scheme does seem to be a form of social credit score implementation,” wrote Dr. Peter McCullough, adding that Twitter is “clearly discriminating against doctors bringing the world the truth.”

One of the primary mechanisms by which this seems to be done is requiring users to “apply” for monetization – then only approving certain ones, while leaving others hanging indefinitely with no explanation:

  • Vaccine Safety Research Foundation: “Hey Elon- our account has been under subscription ‘review’ for 4 months now. Please help. (source).”
  • Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis: “I applied for this months ago. They ignore it.” (source)
  • Dr. David Eli: “You are in good company, I applied 4 months ago.” (source)
  • Sam Husseini: “Twitter never even responded to my request for monetization months ago.” (source)
  • Being Libertarian: “How can us lowly people get approved? Been waiting months?” (source)

Dr. Loupis said she emailed Twitter about why she has been kept in monetization limbo for months, and got a “BS” reply that provided no real explanation.

“I got the same response when I opened a ticket,” replied The Chief Nerd, an influential citizen journalist with 272K followers who was openly skeptical of Musk’s decision to hire Linda Yaccarino.

Another popular user, Lyndon Perry, is also known as “I,Hypocrite” on Twitter (313K followers), said that he emailed the company and got a response confirming that only a “selected group of people” are currently eligible for “creator ad revenue sharing.”

Decensored News has not independently confirmed the authenticity of this email, so take it with a grain of salt, but it does seem to merely confirm what’s empirically happening.

His tweet has garnered over 1.5 million impressions without being disputed by Twitter or “Community Noted” (fact checked).

“While this program could benefit me, personally, greatly, if I’m allowed to join at some point,” continued Perry, “It’s hard to imagine it won’t make twitter worse in the long run.”

“Copyright issues are going to become much more pronounced, the nebulous line about ‘passing human review’ on your account implies ‘be brand-friendly’. That means everyone will become milquetoast to keep their monetization, just like what happened to YouTube.”

Milquetoast — and, perhaps, even less willing to criticize Musk.

Image Credit: Ministério Das Comunicações (CC BY 2.0). May be modified from original.
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