Elon Musk Should Let Nikita Bier Fix Revenue Sharing on X
Total anonymity plus revenue sharing seems to be rewarding extremely low-quality posting.
Nikita Bier is head of product at X. He has always struck me as a reasonable person looking for ways to improve the user experience on the platform without resorting to the sort of heavy-handed moderation efforts that plagued the site before Elon Musk's takeover.
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A few weeks ago, Bier rolled out a feature that identifies X users' countries of origin, which helped to demonstrate that some high-profile American patriot slop accounts, which are often responsible for racist and antisemitic posts that go viral, actually originate in Africa and Asia. Nigeria and Pakistan are particularly overrepresented in this regard. And thanks to X's revenue-sharing policy, in which a portion of the ad revenue generated by the replies to posts is paid out to the creators, tricking people like this can be lucrative.
This all matters because it affects the discourse on the site, where consensus around political narratives is formed. Political commentators have long made X (formerly Twitter) their home, and we measure the salience and impact of our opinions based on the reaction we get from other X users. Thus, when a user with a handle such as "Heritage American" or "MAGA Patriot" writes something on X along the lines of Wasn't America better when black people couldn't vote and Jews didn't run everything? and the post gets millions of likes and retweets, commentators draw the conclusion that racism and antisemitism are popular ideas. This is quite obviously a bad thing.
It turns out, though, many of these accounts are not American: Their authors are not "MAGA" patriots. They're actors, portraying racist and antisemitic caricatures, making money off lazy and malicious content. Bier is trying to cut down on this sort of thing, and that's good.
Along those lines, Bier announced earlier this week that X would give greater algorithmic weight to posts that perform well among users who are geographically proximate to the creator.
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…
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) March 25, 2026
In other words, Bier wants to reward Nigerians and Pakistanis for discussing politics in their countries and punish them for creating manipulative Melania Trump fan accounts.
There's definite merit to this idea, though I understand why foreign accounts that are very interested in American politics (and make a lot of money posting about it) won't like the change. Additionally, it does cut against Musk's contention that X represents the global, digital public square. If Pakistanis' opinions about America are popping off on the platform, isn't that just free speech?
Moreover, foreign content generation is the lesser of two problems: The bigger one is foreign appreciation for American content. That's what Alexis Wilkins was getting at, I think, in a very long and rambling X thread in which she contends that a foreign influence campaign is trying to destroy her reputation. Wilkins is the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, an ex-darling of MAGA who is now widely despised by the Tucker Carlson/Candace Owens/Megyn Kelly noninterventionist and anti-Israel contingent. (See my newsletter from two weeks ago for an overview of the MAGA civil war.) She alleges that foreign accounts are vigorously liking and sharing anti-Wilkins content in order to further the divide between the more traditional pro-Israel faction of MAGA within the Trump administration and increasingly hostile content creators.
"The goal of this operation is not to win a political argument, but to make the fractures feel permanent," she wrote on X.
Of course, that all sounds a bit conspiratorial. It's always very convenient to believe that the reason your critics are gaining influence is because they're cheating in some sense, not because they're genuinely popular.
In any case, Musk has paused implementation of Bier's revenue-sharing tweak, likely out of concern that it would nuke too many foreign-originating, pro-Musk accounts. I think the overall problem is the anonymous nature of all these mega-viral posts. The revenue sharing would work better if people had to attach their real names to the content they were producing: That would likely keep them honest and create greater transparency. Indeed, while the pre-Musk version of X was flawed in numerous ways, I do miss the old verification system, in which you could actually trust that people with blue checkmarks were who they said they were. Total anonymity plus revenue sharing seems to be rewarding extremely low-quality posting and is slowly but steadily degrading the experience on the site.
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Worth Watching
Sigh. We have the trailer for HBO's new Harry Potter show. It mostly looks fine*, but I just can't help but ask: Why are we doing this? The Harry Potter films are good to great. The casting was really spot-on, and they captured the magic of the books quite well. Must we remake things that were pretty much perfect the first time around? Why? Can't anyone come up with new ideas?
I'm not even saying they should stop making Harry Potter content. By all means, use the intellectual property and flesh out the universe. Give me spinoffs, prequels, and sequels. Do what Star Wars did, except hire people who actually have good story ideas. (Instead of Somehow, Palpatine returned.) I'm fine with all that. What I'm not fine with is having the same exact thing remade over and over again.
And it's getting out of hand: Who needs a live-action Moana film that's exactly like the animated film except with 13 percent less CGI? Studios, I'm begging you to stop doing this.
Maybe the Harry Potter show will be great, and maybe (probably) it will make $1 billion anyway, so who cares? Well, I care.
*Also, can they stop making everything so gray and dull and dimly lit? Remember when films used to have color? Anybody?
the contrast is insane pic.twitter.com/wbHHf4odOo
— Axel in Dune Mode???? (@AxelTalksFilm) March 25, 2026
There's only one thing to do: We must hunt down and kill Pazuzu!
Director: "well, I'd say that the final cut!"
Disney Exec: "not so fast- first we have to run it by Pazuzu, the Demon that Eats Colors"
Pazuzu, the Demon that Eats Colors: "Delicious reds and greens! A feast for Pazuzu!"
— Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker⚔️ (@Nomads4Pritzker) March 25, 2026