The economics of viral content have long rewarded the wrong person. A clip is filmed by one account, lifted by a dozen larger ones, and the ad revenue flows to whoever reposted it fastest. X, Elon Musk’s platform, has now changed its revenue-sharing rules to reverse that: when a post that earns money turns out to be someone else’s photo, video or text, the payout is redirected to the original creator. Accounts that do it deliberately will be removed from the creator programme altogether.
How X says it will catch copies
Detection is handled by Grok, the company’s AI model, which X says can now identify copied content three times as effectively as its previous version. Its most recent sweep found roughly 1.5 million stolen posts. Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, made the scope explicit: adding a watermark, an intro or other edits to a stolen video does not make it yours — the revenue still goes to the originator — and the same rule applies to copied viral text. TechCrunch first reported the changes.
The crackdown on engagement bait
The same policy update hardens X’s stance on manufactured engagement. AI-assisted detection of fake and automated accounts is being stepped up, and users who post repeatedly for the purpose of farming likes, replies or followers face action, up to suspension. In practice this targets the reply-guy economy — accounts that exist to comment “this” under every trending post — which has been a major drain on the revenue pool.
Why this matters more than an X policy usually would
Two reasons. First, the mechanism — redirect the money rather than merely take down the post — is new for a large platform and is likely to be copied. Meta, YouTube and TikTok all have rights systems that can block or demonetise a copy, but none routes the earnings to the victim automatically. Second, it puts an AI model in the position of deciding who created what, which will produce disputes: near-duplicate memes, licensed reposts, footage two people filmed of the same event. X has not described an appeals process.
The lesson for Bangladesh’s page economy
A large share of the most-followed Bangla-language pages on Facebook are built almost entirely on downloaded videos with a logo stamped in the corner, and many of them earn from Meta’s bonus and in-stream programmes. The X change is a preview of where every platform is heading: detection that sees through watermarks, and payouts that follow the source. Creators who film their own material have nothing to fear from it; pages that have never filmed anything should start.
