Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
X's new creator program approved one of its most notorious ragebaiters on day one
X ended the impression-based creator payouts it had run since July 2023 on Sept. 7, and the replacement gates entry on verified followers and 90 days of verified reach. The old program, X says, was misaligned.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- X shut down Creator Revenue Sharing on Sept. 7, the program that had paid posters on impressions since July 2023, and replaced it with Original Content Rewards, which pays for unique views.
- Entry to the new program requires 500 verified followers and 500,000 verified Home timeline impressions over the prior 90 days, and an account has to keep posting original content to stay in.
- Robby Lefkowitz, whose Murray Hill Guy account has been paid a little under $80,000 by X since June 2024, was approved for the new program on its first day.
- Nikita Bier, X's ex-head of product, spent the spring playing whack-a-mole on aggregator payouts and denouncing accounts by name, then stepped down two days before the new program was announced.
- Lefkowitz earns $3,000 to $10,000 in a typical month from X, on top of brand deals that included $1,500 from Polymarket for one post and a coaching business.
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Why it matters
- constraint Payment now requires about 5,556 verified home-timeline impressions a day sustained for three months, so an account below that reach earns nothing from X however original its posts are.
- cost With payment attached to unique views, a reader's second and third look at the same post no longer pays, and accounts that recycled material into repeat impressions lose that income line.
- decision A creator who falls outside the gate has to rebuild verified followers and verified reach before any choice about what to post changes the money.
- contradiction Fortune reports creators still earning well without much controversy, which cuts against the premise that impression-based pay was what produced the provocation supply.
The 90-day impression bar works out at about 5,556 verified home-timeline impressions a day, held for a quarter [1]. Lefkowitz's biggest post, a screenshot of a woman cancelling a date with a man who would not say whether he voted for Zohran Mamdani, drew more than 50 million views on its own, a hundred times the entry threshold [11][2]. He said it brought him roughly half his current following [11].
Lefkowitz started the account in June 2024 while working for a protein company [5] and has taken a little under $80,000 from X since [6], about $2,960 a month across the 27 months to the Sept. 7 change [3]. That average sits below the floor of the range he gave Fortune for a typical month, so most of the money is recent [4]. The check that followed the 50-million-view post was, he told Fortune, "in the thousands" [12].
He works on the account two to three hours a day [15]. At three hours a day for a month, the bottom of his monthly range is about $33 an hour; at two hours a day, the top is about $167 [5]. The single Polymarket post is worth between 15 and 50 percent of a month of X payouts, depending where the month lands [6], and he also runs a coaching business [14]. "Any engagement is good," he said [17].
The new rules name copied content, engagement solicitation and anything "potentially harmful", and describe the program they replace as "misaligned" [4]. Lefkowitz said X has never contacted him about a rule violation, and that when another account posted his phone number, friends who work at the company got it banned [16]. X did not respond to Fortune's multiple requests for comment [9].
On the single case in the record, the eligibility test screens distribution. Lefkowitz told Fortune he stands by probably 80% of the posts, with the other 20% meant to "get the people going" [7], and that account was approved on the program's first day [8]. Two other readings deserve a hearing. The repricing may sit in the price of a view, since payment now attaches to unique views instead of impressions [1][2], and Fortune's account does not include a per-view rate. Or the target was aggregation, the one practice the rules name outright [4], with provocation left to the tone rules; Fortune reports other creators are still earning from X without posting as much controversy [18]. Lefkowitz's next biweekly check decides between those two. If his views hold and the payment drops, the change was in the rate; if the payment holds, the gate let the business through intact. Fortune reports he plans to keep posting either way [19].
What to watch
- Lefkowitz's first biweekly check under Original Content Rewards, set against unchanged view counts.
- Whether X publishes a per-unique-view rate or the size of the new payout pool.
- The first removal of an approved account under the engagement-solicitation clause, which would test whether the rule bites after entry.