X says it is updating its revenue-sharing incentives to give more weight to engagement from a user's home region, hoping to “disincentivize” gaming US attention
The website's location transparency feature revealed dozens of pro-Trump accounts were based in other countries.
EngadgetMariella Moon
Context & Ripple Effects
X had already shifted Creator Revenue Sharing toward engagement from Premium users rather than ad views, making the composition of an account’s audience more consequential to payouts. Its location-transparency tool then exposed a pattern in which overseas accounts could seek US political attention, as documented in reporting on incentives for international accounts to target US political engagement.
The new weighting change is therefore an incentive-design response to a problem made visible by the platform’s own disclosure feature, including accounts presented as US political influencers while operating abroad. It matters because it changes which engagement X treats as economically valuable, rather than simply removing individual accounts.
First-order effects
Creators whose revenue depends on engagement from outside their home region—particularly those targeting US political audiences from elsewhere—face lower relative payout potential.
X makes home-region audience engagement a more important input to revenue sharing, giving creators a direct financial reason to build or retain local audiences.
Second-order effects
Accounts built around cross-border political reach may adjust their content, audience-building tactics, or account operations to preserve earnings, while domestically focused creators gain a relative advantage.
The move pairs transparency with payment rules: location information can help expose misalignment, while the revised incentive reduces the payoff from it.
Third-order effects
If X continues tying payouts to audience provenance, creator monetization will become more explicitly shaped by platform-defined authenticity and geographic relevance signals.
This points to a broader tension in engagement-based payouts: platforms can reward reach at scale, but must continually redesign formulas when those rewards encourage behavior they consider manipulative or harmful.
The trend: Social platforms are moving from broad engagement rewards toward more constrained payout systems that encode judgments about audience quality and creator authenticity.
I'm based in France, but 43% of my audience is American. I know many of us are in the same situation. To reach a wider audience, all my posts are in English, the international language. Those who cause trouble may be punished, but with this change, which will significantly [image…
X was going to change their monetization program to emphasize local content, for example if content is about U.S. politics to get paid it would need to be from the U.S. or a neighbor. Then Elon realized all of MAGA is based in Nigeria, Pakistan and Eastern Europe. [image]
monetize accounts of people from the blue countries and let us communicate with each other demonetize accounts of people from the red countries and let me opt out of seeing their posts it is that easy [image]
Starting Thursday, we'll be updating our revenue sharing incentives to better reward the content we want on X: We will be giving more weight to impressions from your home region—to encourage content that resonates with people in your country, in neighboring countries and people
Terrible for me because my audience is mostly US But I am always outside US, like now Brazil, and other times Portugal or Thailand This isn't great for digital nomads
@forgebitz Out of curiosity, I simulated the impact based on last payout: Your payout would've been +168% higher Our regional bucketing aims to be very large and includes all of Western Europe.