Back in February, Twitter owner Elon Musk said the company would start sharing ad revenue from the platform with content creators, provided they were signed up for Twitter Blue, the company's $8-per-month subscription program.
That program finally launched today, in a bid to "help people earn a living directly on Twitter," the company said in a tweeted statement.
In order to be considered for the program, Twitter requires users to meet a set of criteria; individuals must be subscribed to Twitter Blue, while Verified Organizations need at least 5 million impressions on posts in each of the last three months. Twitter will also require people to "pass human review for Creator Monetization Standards."
Twitter has opened the program "to an initial group." Later this month, it will roll it out "more broadly," at which point "all eligible creators will be able to apply."
Some of the people in that initial group have been tweeting about their payouts, and they appear to have something in common: They’re far-right influencers, The Washington Post reports.
The account, @EndWokeness, for instance, which has only been on Twitter for the past year, tweeted that it's earned $10,419 through the program so far.
Self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, who was recently released from jail on rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, reported that he’s earned $20,379 on the platform.
The Post notes that not all prominent far-right influencers appear to be part of the program, an issue that many are reportedly venting about in private, in order to avoid the wrath of Musk. An anonymous former Twitter executive told the paper said that the monetization strategy feels like it was “pulled out of thin air for a specific subset of creators that [Musk] wanted to placate.”
Many account holders have echoed that sentiment on Twitter, noting that they were not invited to join the program despite their massive audiences and length of time on the platform.