Did Elon Musk Just Admit X Underpaid Creators? Tesla boss sues his own company, compares it to YouTube

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday pointedly said that microblogging platform X was underpaying its content creators and praised Google-owned YouTube for its monetization scheme. In response to an exchange between X CEO Nikita Bier, Musk wrote unequivocally: “No, the problem is that we’re underpaying and not allocating pay accurately enough. YouTube does a much better job.” The answer came on a Sept. 30 thread, when Bier, the head of product at X, posted: “Over the next week I’ll be rolling out some small upgrades for power users. Most of these things were quick fixes that somehow fell through the cracks. Stay tuned.” Bier’s post attracted more than 500 comments, with many pointing out flaws in X’s payouts. “…please fix the monetization. I have consistently compared my payouts to my peers and have consistently been underpaid. Happy to provide data,” user Peter Duan wrote, while another user shared a photo of a dashboard tracking payments and asked for a similar feature. As Bier’s post garnered more and more responses, quite a few of them dealing with issues related to monetization, the X executive responded: “At this point, I think creator payouts are doing more harm than good — and we need to exit to a different system.” More than two weeks after this exchange, the thread seemed to catch the attention of Musk, who outright criticized X for underpaying its content creators and praised YouTube. What is X’s creator monetization program? The creator monetization program was introduced by X under Musk’s leadership after its $44 billion takeover of the microblogging platform. Under the program, X allows verified users to earn a share of advertising revenue based on users’ engagement with their posts. That said, since the system went live, there have been many complaints about inconsistent earnings, delayed payments and unclear metrics. With Musk now personally joining the conversation about X’s monetization scheme, it remains to be seen whether the platform quickly addresses creators’ concerns.