Twitter’s paying some users to tweet—and it’s already raising eyebrows

On Thursday, some of the first accounts enrolled in Twitter’s content creator program started to share how much they’ve made from tweets on the platform. However, the accounts that the company chose to test-drive the program are drawing scrutiny—in large part because they’re predominantly accounts run by high-profile far-right influencers.

For instance, Rogan O’Handley, who goes by @DC_Draino on Twitter, shared that he has earned $7,036 in ad revenue from the social network thus far. In the post sharing his earnings, he also noted that he had been banned from Twitter before Musk took over. He followed up the tweet by sharing the total number of impressions his posts have received since February: 1.134 billion.

Andrew Tate, who is currently under house arrest and facing charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized criminal group, reported he was paid over $20,000 by Twitter for his posts.

Others receiving payouts include Benny Johnson ($9,500), Ian Miles Cheong ($16,200), and the account End Wokeness ($10,400).

The payouts were first reported by the Washington Post, which also noted that Musk is favoring specific right-wing influencers who support and agree with him, while excluding those he has had conflicts with . . . suggesting that he’s not applying the site’s terms of service equally to every account. The paper also quoted an anonymous former Twitter executive who said that it appeared as though the payouts were “pulled out of thin air for a specific subset of creators that he wanted to placate.”

Musk initially announced that Twitter would be sharing ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads in February of this year. He quickly followed up that initial announcement with the caveat that to be eligible for a payout an account would also need to be subscribed to Twitter Blue. It also appears as though payouts only happen when tweets are viewed by other “verified” users who pay to use the platform, which quickly drew comparisons to an MLM (multilevel marketing, aka pyramid) scheme.

The payout amount disclosures happened shortly before a tweet from @Twitter announcing that the program would be rolling out more broadly later this month. That tweet also provided a link on what would be required for content creators to apply to be part of the program, namely things like being over 18 and having a profile picture, but also being subscribed to Twitter Blue, and having at least 5 million impressions on posts for each of the past three months. And then, needing to pass a “human review” to determine if an account is eligible for the program.

The announcement comes almost a week after Meta’s launch of Threads, a Twitter competitor, which already has over 100 million users. It also comes at a time when Twitter is battling site issues and declines in traffic, which have been negatively impacting its valuation. The launch of the creator program could potentially be an effort to help the platform retain users.