Elon Musk's new rule: Corrected posts lose revenue share, boosting facts over sensationalism on X

In a game-changing move, Elon Musk just dropped a bombshell: if your posts get corrected by the Community Notes fact-checking squad on the platform, you can kiss your revenue-sharing dreams goodbye. But why, you ask? Well, Musk's all about boosting accuracy and kicking sensationalism to the curb.

He's not playing games, either. Musk wants everyone to know that trying to misuse Community Notes to demonetize folks will be about as subtle as a bull in a China shop. That's because all the "code and data" are out in the open for everyone to see.

What's really cool about this is that anyone (where the Community Notes feature is available) can jump in and be a part of Fact-Checking volunteers. You can toss in a little nugget of info to add context to a post or help out by fixing a mistake. Then, the wisdom of the crowd kicks in, and folks with different perspectives can vote on how helpful those notes are. The cream rises to the top!

This move is part of a bigger plan to tackle the flood of fake news and disinformation, especially during times like the Israel-Palestine conflict. Musk and the team at X have been making some other tweaks too. They've sped up how fast fact-checks get rated, so the good stuff can go live quicker. Plus, they're sending notifications to people whose posts got fact-checked, hoping to nudge them into setting the record straight.

But, let's keep it real, this new rule might rain on the parade of some creators who love stirring up the pot for a quick buck. On the other hand, it's just a Band-Aid solution for the misinformation pandemic, especially with crises like the Gaza-Israel and Russia-Ukraine conflicts still unfolding.

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So, how many creators are we talking about here? Well, X hasn't spilled the beans on that, but it's tied to how many people pay for X Premium. As of August, there were less than 950K X Premium subscribers, a tiny slice of the 500 million monthly active users. Since only Premium users can be creators, that slice is even smaller.

There's one more mystery here: how unbiased are the folks on Community Notes? X claims they're a diverse bunch, but we haven't seen any numbers to back that up. Linda Yaccarino, X's CEO, said there are over 100K of them from 44 countries, so it sounds like a global squad, but we're still in the dark about the details.

Photo: Unsplash

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by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World