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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27951 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Twitter has recently updated its monetization scheme. Here are some Tweets by mid-level accounts celebrating their pay raise: Tiffany Fong, Richard Hanania, Kyle Mann, Crémieux, i/o, Austen Allred

Notice anything? All of these accounts are followed by @elonmusk. I did some additional digging. This looks to be the official announcement.

Content quality, not ad impressions: Our algorithms evaluate viewer engagement by analyzing interactions such as replies, likes, bookmarks, and the time spent viewing your content. These factors directly contribute to your payout. Only genuine interactions from Premium users will be counted toward your earnings.

Higher signal engagements: Certain engagements are worth more than others. Engagements from users on higher premium tiers are also worth more.

Audience analysis: We also consider the characteristics of your audience, including who they follow and who follows them. This holistic approach can influence your monetization scores and payout weights.

It flew a bit under the radar at the time, but with checks going out today we have a much better idea of how the scheme works in practice. It sure looks to be a patronage system for tech-adjacent influencers and intellectuals crossed with a pyramid scheme.

How did the monetization look like before Musk?

Was a political side favored?

They were remarkably impartial. Every single user was getting the exact same amount, regardless of the their politics, or any other factor for that matter.

You are joking and the amount was zero, right? Because I think before Musk there was no monetization?

Correct!

It doesn't seem fair to call it a pyramid scheme. It's just sharing revenue from platform subscribers with the accounts they like.

Twitter is in a strange place where major leftwing users have been trying to bankrupt the company. Encouraging advertiser boycotts and discouraging their readers from getting a paid account.

It isn't really surprising that Twitter went with a monetization system where those users don't get paid.

A pyramid scheme is a system in which you convince people to pay you on the assumption that they will make their money back when other people will pay them in turn.

I don't think that the median twitter user is under the illusion that they should pay for premium in the expectation that they will become popular and make money from twitter, so I would not call it a pyramid scheme.

I mean, on the face of it that makes sense to me. Twitter revenue used to be purely ad based, so people who tried to earn money off Twitter got paid based on how much ad revenue they brought in. Now Twitter has subscribers, and people can get paid based on how much they keep subscribers "engaged". I mean, the alternative is even shittier, isn't it? Twitter opens up this new revenue stream from subscriptions, and just fucking keeps all of it regardless of all the work the people creating the content on the platform do?

Youtube has similar revenue sharing models with respect to people who subscribe to ad free Youtube. Once upon a time, when I actually gave a shit about Youtube and it's content creator economy, I heard content creators were really happy with the revenue they got from paid ad free Youtube watch time. It was more consistent and reliable than ad impressions.

I know many left-leaning accounts that got pretty big payouts. Though given I'm a left-leaning tech person and that's my bubble, the "tech-adjacent influencers and intellectuals" part might still be true.

Notice anything?

I noticed that you listed accounts like that. I have no idea what the base rates are.

By the Chinese Robber fallacy, you could have literally a million examples of something and still have no point (more like hundreds for Twitter pay, given the population size).

I respect random Motters more than journalists, but still not enough to take you at your word here.

I have a friend who made $750 for the last two weeks. He's not followed by Elon.

How many views does he have?

So you've concluded that X has a thumb on the algos because 6 accounts that are followed by Elon Musk have received a bump?

I mean, it's not impossible, but the evidence seems incredibly thin.

At a minimum you should confirm that prominent left-wing accounts are not getting a similar bump.

Edit: It appears that they are according to @monoamine.

I would expect that Musk following an account results in more follows from other premium accounts, so they don't necessarily have to do anything they didn't say they were doing for Musk follows to have an effect.

I would expect a bias against left wing accounts since the demographic they target for engagement performatively doesn't pay for premium.

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