On Thursday, Twitter said it had expanded its creator monetization fund to share more ad revenue with “creators.” Who is a Twitter creator these days? Well, some of the most politically divisive figures are making the most change in Musk’s new world order.
Through Musk’s mouthpiece account, the company claimed it would pay out $5 million in total to the lingering mob of tweeters still regularly posting on the platform. The ad-revenue sharing was first announced back in February and was supposedly on an invite-only basis for eligible creators. So who were these exclusive, eligible accounts? Twitter paid out more than $20,000 to Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist who has been indicted on charges of rape and human trafficking alongside his brother in Romania.
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But wait, there’s more. Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing spin doctor who increasingly has the ear of the great overlord Musk, reported he received $16,259 on Twitter for tweets focused on subjects like fat-shaming people in TikTok videos and promoting former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social takes. Benny Johnson, a failed journalist, plagiarist, and far-right rabble-rouser, made close to $10,000. Ashley St. Clair, a Babylon Bee writer, and former mouthpiece for Turning Point USA, saw just over $7,000 hit her bank account through the Stripe direct payment app. The right-wing junk account @EndWokeness also received a payout north of $10,000.
Some did not make as much as others. Right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool only made a little under $6,000. Other accounts on the right-wing conspiracy sphere made a little over $2,000. Some of these accounts noted they have been demonetized on other platforms like Facebook, but they’re thriving on Musk’s anything-goes Twitter.
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Of course, right-wingers weren’t the only ones to make bank. The Internet Hall of Fame Twitter account, which simply reposts other people’s content on the internet, reportedly netted over $107,000. The bot account @elon_alerts made just over $2,000. Brain and Ed Krassenstein, who made their name online through their anti-Trump replies on Twitter, both shared screenshots showing they made close to $25,000 from Musk’s partner program. The two were banned on Twitter back in 2019 over allegations they boosted their posts with fake accounts, though Musk reinstated them back in December.
And all this from a company that can’t even pay rent for its office space or its public relations partners. The app has also conflicted with advertisers for repeatedly showing ads for products next to anti-Semitic, racist, or other hate-filled content. Now Twitter’s more-limited ad revenue is getting split with the very accounts advertisers have been trying to avoid.
The far-right payouts were first noted by The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, whose report sent much of right-wing Twitter—and Musk himself—into a tizzy. It’s unclear why some accounts qualified, and others did not. Some Twitter accounts paying for the blue checkmark claiming they had at least 5 million impressions complained they never received an invite.
Gizmodo reached out to Twitter for comment, but of course, all we got back was a message reading “💩.”
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To be eligible for the ads revenue sharing, accounts needed to have a Twitter Blue subscription, be verified, and have at least 5 million impressions on posts for a three-month timespan. Musk said that the biggest reason some made more bank than others isn’t necessarily about impressions, but how many ads were shown to other verified users. The Twitter owner also claimed the payouts were cumulative since February.
Though it wasn’t just the right-wingers to receive payouts, the platform has angled far more to the right over time, leading to an exodus of any sanity left over to competitors like Bluesky and Threads. Despite the dire prospects of other right-wing social media, Twitter seems to think it can survive on all the far-right figureheads still promoting the platform. The Wall Street Journal reported that disgraced Fox host Tucker Carlson was planning to create his own media company that would somehow be tied to Twitter. According to unnamed sources, Carlson is trying to work with Daily Caller co-founder Neil Patel.
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Carlson already has unhinged videos of himself suited up in a shed that he posts regularly to Twitter. This new company would require users to subscribe to watch full content, while Twitter users would only get a taste from previews. It would otherwise have its own site and app, though it’s unclear how deep a partnership with Musk’s bird app would run. Either way, Elon’s X-Corp is soon to be the right’s next big app, so long as he can keep paying the creators to stay.
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