Major platforms, including YouTube, have moved to overhaul their revenue-sharing systems. The goal is to strengthen platform competitiveness by concentrating revenue on creators who own an account that produces high-quality content and drives steady engagement. The flood of "AI slop," meaning low-quality content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), and growing user complaints are also cited as reasons for the policy revamps.
According to the tech industry on the 19th, major content platforms such as YouTube, X, and Facebook recently raised the bar for creator monetization and reworked their revenue-sharing systems to exclude uniform content that copies other popular posts or reposts them with minimal edits from revenue eligibility. The intent is to reduce clickbait content consumed as one-offs and to reward accounts that consistently create creative, high-quality content.
YouTube, Google's video service, said it will double the requirements for new creators to receive a share of revenue from ads and other sources. Valid watch time over the past year was raised from 4,000 hours to 8,000 hours, and valid Shorts (short videos) views over the past 90 days were raised from 10 million to 20 million. The new standards will apply starting in Feb. to creators who newly join the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to share in ad and YouTube Premium revenue. The subscriber requirement remains at 1,000.
In particular, for Shorts, even YouTubers who qualify for revenue sharing will have payments suspended if views fall below 10 million in the past 90 days. This appears aimed at reducing the share of insincere AI-generated videos. According to U.S. video-editing platform Kapwing, about 20% of Shorts YouTube shows to new users were low-quality content generated by AI. As AI slop has poured in, criticism has mounted that the overall user experience is deteriorating.
In response, YouTube is seen to have tightened monetization for accounts that indiscriminately churn out AI-based low-quality, repetitive Shorts in pursuit of a one-time "big hit," while raising standards to favor YouTubers who secure a loyal fan base with carefully crafted, creative videos and deliver stable performance over a set period. In fact, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan earlier this year named "a war on AI slop" as the platform's top priority.
Some also interpret the move as YouTube seeking to bolster platform competitiveness with a quality-over-quantity monetization policy as competition to recruit creators and influencers with TikTok and Instagram intensifies.
X, the social media (SNS) platform led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, said in early this month that it would scrap its existing revenue-sharing program and introduce a new "original content rewards" system. To qualify for revenue payouts, an account must have at least 500 verified subscribers who are not "ghost accounts" and at least 500,000 post views over the past 90 days.
It also added a criterion of "originality." X will share revenue only for "original content" that a creator directly produced or filmed. Content that copies and pastes another account's post or reposts it with minimal edits will be excluded from revenue eligibility. X likewise is focusing on reducing repetitive and uniform content.
An X official said, "The existing creator compensation framework had strayed far from its original intent," and added, "We built an entirely new revenue-sharing system so creators can provide completely new and original content."
In March, Facebook announced an "expansion of original content creator rewards" under which posts that recycle other creators' content without adding new material, or content that simply strings multiple videos together, are excluded from feed exposure and revenue payments. It also introduced last year a "removing spam content on Facebook" policy that restricts monetization for accounts that use multiple accounts to repeatedly post identical content or try to boost exposure with irrelevant text and excessive hashtags.
A tech industry official said, "These revenue-sharing revamps aim to curb the flood of low-quality content and prevent spam and ghost accounts from siphoning off revenue that should go to real creators," and added, "With more creators seeking to make money on major platforms, there is also an aim to manage expenses so that the pool of reward recipients and payout amounts do not grow excessively."