Opinion: Twitter aka X is now paying users, it may make the world nastier

There is an often-repeated line on social media. People say it again and again, attributing it to American writer Mark Twain. The line is: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." And it is beautiful in its irony. Because it is a popular lie travelling around the world. Mark Twain did not say anything like this. No one knows with surety who said this or if at all, anyone said it. Instead, it is possible that the line is a simplification of a sentence that Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710. That sentence was, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it."

Irrespective, there is no denying the popularity of this quote. It befits the time of misinformation and rumour-mongering that we live in, and we all repeat it like a mantra every second day on social media. So, let me borrow this line and add to it: "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, and as it travels, it makes some hefty money."

If you go to Twitter — now called X as ordained by Elon Musk — today, you will invariably come across some popular X users posting screenshots of their earnings. This is because X is now paying users if they:

1. Subscribe to X Premium (earlier called Twitter Blue)
2. Opt in to receive payments
3. Have at least 15 million impressions on their tweets in the last three months

The earnings are substantial for some, not so much for the rest. But highly popular X users do have a chance to earn around Rs 50,000 to Rs 80,000 per month solely from whatever they say and share on X aka Twitter.

Anyone with good sense and a bit of intelligence will see how problematic the whole preposition is. The payment for popularity on social media is a direct incentive to push information, narrative, rumours — in other words, content — that will travel halfway around the world before someone gets a chance to shoot it down.

This is not new, though. People far more intelligent than me, including people like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai who run tech platforms, know it well. They know that the most addictive and viral content on their platforms is also most likely something that panders to our basest instincts and negative emotions.

Outrage spreads far and wide on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Lies are more entertaining. Anger gives more engagement. This is the reason why conspiracy theories are super popular on YouTube. Or why half of the discussion in family and residence society WhatsApp groups is around information that is baseless and outrageously wrong.

In his slim — but in my opinion, his best — novel The Fall, Albert Camus talks about truth and lies. One day, the unnamed narrator feels disgusted with the life he is living and decides to mend his ways. But the result is not to his liking. "Undoubtedly, I was in the realm of truth; but truth, dear friend, is utterly tediousâ€æ Untruth, on the other hand, is a beautiful dusk that enhances everything," he says.

This is something we see play out on social media every day. It is well understood by now that social media platforms bring out the worst in us. We are more inclined to believe lies, more interested in hearing people foaming at their mouths, more likely to share content that is a cheap shot at confirming some bias, or other that we hold.

Example: A popular Twitter user, on Tuesday, shared that Twitter is sending him a little over Rs 2 lakh as Twitter earnings for the last three odd months. His most viral tweet in recent days with over 6 million impressions is his snide — "The Avg IQ of the country went up after her departure" — at an Indian student studying in Canada.

Another of his tweets that has raked up impressions — over a million — is a video of an altercation with a man and girl in a residential society in Noida.

It would be amiss to single out anyone here. Because it is not about what this user or that user is sharing and saying on social media and YouTube. It is about the tech platforms and how they enable hate, bigotry, racism, rumour-mongering, misinformation and outright nastiness in our day-to-day conversations.

In particular, YouTube, and now X aka Twitter, are egregiously bad at this. Another example: Monu Manesar. Monu, before he was in the news for his alleged involvement in the murder of two men earlier this year, routinely uploaded his videos on YouTube. He, despite his videos showing signs of harassment that he meted out to people in the name of saving cows, was deemed by YouTube worthy of a Gold Button and was given an entry into the company’s video monetisation programme.

Even when Monu became a suspect in the murder of two men, Google and YouTube did not kick him out of their platform. It is only now with Monu again in the news after the violence in Nuh that YouTube has deleted his account.

Just the way YouTube has become a platform filled with "content creators" pushing their outrage-filled narratives, which, by the way, are mostly built on lies and misinformation, Twitter is set to become a global platform for pushing the content that would play to the gallery.

With Elon Musk’s plan to pay its users, these users now have a greater incentive to push for information that is sensational and will go viral. Combined with the fact that Twitter is going easy on those who tweet nasty — recently Musk reinstated the account of a right-wing propagandist who shared child porn photos on his timeline — and the risk is that users will start concocting stories or amplifying emotions that may not be true but will garner more eyeballs.

It was already happening. Just that, now there is an active incentive to spread that video of a man slapping someone, even if the video is staged. Or to cry wolf, like the Aesop's boy did, even if there is no basis or substance in the crying. But unlike the boy who suffered — the moral of the story was: lies would not be rewarded. The Boys running errant on social media will now get money. In other words, with its monetisation programme, X aka Twitter is about to give lies travelling halfway around the world a cool pair of shiny wings. They will fly faster than before.