The “Anti-Gaming” Gamble: Can X’s New Monetisation Push Topple YouTube’s Dominance?

Key Points:

• Elon Musk has greenlit a plan to overhaul X’s creator payouts, aiming to exceed YouTube’s current revenue-sharing benchmarks.
• Product lead Nikita Bier claims a new “fraud-killing” method will eliminate 99% of system gaming to ensure legitimate payouts.
• The strategy focuses on securing “authoritative content” as AI models increasingly scrape and commoditize generic web data.

Elon Musk has signaled a major shift in X’s creator monetization strategy, positioning the platform as a high-stakes rival to Google’s YouTube. 

In a series of public exchanges, Musk suggested that X is ready to raise payouts for original content to levels that could potentially disrupt the long-standing industry hierarchy.

The change follows mounting pressure from the creator community. Users on the platform have argued that without fair compensation, social media giants risk losing their most influential voices. 

Musk signaled his agreement with a user who posited that platforms paying creators will be the last ones standing once Large Language Models (LLMs) “finish eating the rest of the internet’s homework.”

Responding to the suggestion that X should outpace competitors in payments to secure authoritative content, Musk replied, “OK, let’s do it, but rigorously enforce no gaming of the system.”

The YouTube Benchmark and the MrBeast Challenge

While the ambition to lead in creator monetization strategy is clear, the financial hurdle remains steep. YouTube has spent nearly two decades refining its Partner Program, paying out billions to its creator base.

High-profile creators have expressed skepticism about X’s ability to match the scale of established video platforms. Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, recently weighed in on the difficulty of the task. 

Donaldson noted the sheer volume of revenue generated by the legacy video giant.

“Competing with YouTube revenue gonna be pretty hard, they’re the best platform to ever exist at this. I’ve done 9 figures in ad revenue on just one channel for example,” MrBeast posted on X.

Addressing the Fraud Factor

A core pillar of the updated creator monetization strategy involves a “rigorous” crackdown on artificial engagement. Historically, X’s ad-revenue-sharing model has faced criticism for incentivizing “engagement farming,” where users post inflammatory or low-quality content simply to trigger interactions and payouts.

X’s Product Head, Nikita Bier, has been tasked with solving the platform’s integrity issues. In response to Musk’s directive, Bier confirmed that the team is ready to implement new safeguards. “On it. We have a new method that should wipe out 99% of fraud,” Bier stated.

This move is critical for the platform’s reputation with advertisers. If X can successfully filter out bot-driven amplification and coordinated manipulation, it could attract higher-tier ad spend, which in turn fuels the payout pool for legitimate creators.

The AI Influence on Original Content

The urgency behind this creator monetization strategy is largely driven by the rise of generative AI. As LLMs absorb vast swaths of the internet to train their models, “human-generated,” authoritative content is becoming a scarce and valuable commodity.

Industry analysts suggest that by paying creators more, X aims to become a walled garden of original data. This creates a feedback loop: high-quality creators stay on X because of the pay, which ensures the platform remains a primary source for real-time news and unique insights, data that remains valuable for both users and the training of Musk’s own AI ventures, like xAI’s Grok.

Evolution of X’s Revenue Sharing

Since Musk’s acquisition of the platform, X has transitioned from a purely ad-supported model to one that includes tiered subscriptions and direct revenue sharing for X Premium subscribers. Currently, payouts are largely determined by the number of organic impressions a creator receives from other verified users.

However, the current model has been described by some creators as unpredictable. X is attempting to professionalize its creator ecosystem by aiming to surpass YouTube’s revenue-sharing percentages. The goal is to move beyond “viral moments” and toward a sustainable business model for long-form video and investigative journalism.

The success of this initiative will likely depend on whether Nikita Bier’s “fraud-killing” method can truly distinguish between genuine influence and sophisticated bot nets. If successful, X may provide the first real challenge to YouTube’s decade-long monopoly on high-earning independent creators.