X tries to limit creator revenue for foreign influencers but Musk intervenes

X’s Head of Product, Nikita Bier, announced a change to the platform’s creator payouts on Tuesday, but according to Elon Musk, the change isn’t going live just yet.

Bier shared a post announcing that in determining payments, X “will be giving more weight to impressions from your home region.” The motivation appears to be discouraging engagement farming via political posts, with Bier adding that, “While we appreciate everyone’s opinion on American politics, we hope this will disincentivize gaming the attention of US or Japanese accounts.”

The pending change could be an effort to address an issue that was highlighted in November when X rolled out a feature showing where users’ accounts are based from. The feature revealed that many accounts posting prolifically about American politics are not based in the US, including many users claiming to be Americans. X quickly removed information about where accounts were created, though, and added disclaimers about travel, VPNs, and proxies potentially leading to inaccurate location data.

Bier specifically called out political content in a response to another X user’s reply to his original post, commenting, “Of course, you’re welcome to continue chiming in on America [sic] politics. We just won’t send money overseas for that content.”

However, Musk replied several hours later in a post stating, “We will pause moving forward with this until further consideration.” The update to creator payouts was supposed to roll out on Thursday, but it sounds like that will no longer be the case after Musk’s follow-up post.