X is retiring the payout system that has defined creator monetization on the platform, according to TechCrunch.
The company is winding down its existing Revenue Sharing program and replacing it with a new one called Original Content Rewards, TechCrunch reports. X described the outgoing program as "misaligned" — a notable admission from a company that has spent years promoting payouts as a reason for creators to post there rather than on rival networks.
The distinction implied by the new program's name is the heart of the change. Revenue sharing, as the label suggests, paid out based on a creator's share of activity on the platform. "Original Content Rewards" points instead toward compensating material that a creator actually made, rather than material that merely performed well.
That matters because engagement-based payouts have a well-known failure mode: they reward whatever travels furthest, regardless of who produced it. A system tuned purely to attention can end up paying people who repackage, repost, or aggregate other people's work more reliably than it pays the people who did the work in the first place.
The TechCrunch report is the only detail available here, and it does not specify payout rates, eligibility rules, or a timeline for the transition — so creators currently earning under revenue sharing do not yet know what their income will look like on the other side.
It matters because X is rewriting the financial incentive that shapes what millions of people choose to post, and any change to who gets paid changes what shows up in the feed.