X aims to prevent creators from profiting off stolen viral clips for quick cash.

      The platform is decreasing payouts for users accused of reposting stolen content and manipulating engagement.

      For years, X has discreetly rewarded one of the internet's most irritating business practices: appropriating someone else's content, reposting it quickly, labeling it as "BREAKING," and accumulating millions of impressions before the original creator even notices. Now, it appears the platform is finally ready to address that entire system.

      X claims that repost farmers and clickbait accounts are seeing their payouts diminish.

      According to Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, the company is now actively focusing on large accounts that have been "programmatically reuploading content from smaller accounts" to exploit X's creator revenue-sharing model. The platform states it will now redirect impressions and monetization advantages back to original creators rather than repost aggregators.

      Over the last month, we have identified several large accounts that have been programmatically reuploading content from smaller accounts to manipulate the revenue-sharing program and avoid giving credit to the original authors. We are now recognizing these posts and allocating the…— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) May 23, 2026

      Bier mentions that X has started locating accounts that misuse the system and significantly reducing their payouts. In some instances, repeat offenders reportedly experienced a reduction in creator revenue by as much as 90 percent. The crackdown seems to also target accounts that flood timelines with clickbait headlines, recycled videos, rage-bait engagement posts, and rapid aggregation. X suggests that creators who want to add commentary should use the proper “Quote” or “Share Video” features to ensure that attribution still benefits the original uploader.

      X has unknowingly monetized content theft for years.

      Interestingly, this issue was never truly concealed. As soon as X began compensating creators primarily based on impressions and engagement, the platform quickly became inundated with repost accounts exploiting viral videos, rage-bait politics, AI-generated content, crypto spam, and recycled posts created solely for the purpose of chasing monetization payouts.

      And honestly, X created the ideal incentive structure for all of this. Reposting someone else's content was often quicker, easier, and more lucrative than producing original content in the first place. This is precisely why this crackdown needed to occur eventually; if real creators no longer benefit from their work, the platform gradually devolves into an endless stream of stolen content competing for ad revenue.

      Varun is an experienced technology journalist and editor with over eight years in consumer tech media. His work spans…

      The police are stepping in and are advocating for social media bans for users under 16.

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      UK law enforcement is no longer waiting for tech companies to take action. The National Crime Agency (NCA) and National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) have jointly urged that children under 16 be prohibited from any social media, gaming applications, or AI that does not remove what they refer to as "high-risk" features. This follows the UK government's active consultation on the possibility of implementing a complete social media ban for users under 16, according to the BBC.

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      Social media is diminishing your happiness with each scroll.

      The more time you spend scrolling, the more your happiness declines.

      Doom-scrolling is the worst. The mind-numbing cycle begins with "just five minutes" and ends an hour or more later, leaving you feeling worse about your life than before. I had to remove Instagram from my iPhone just to prevent myself from wasting hours each night. If you've also experienced that sense of despair after a scrolling session, science supports that feeling. The World Happiness Report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, has found a clear connection between excessive social media use and declining wellbeing, significantly affecting younger individuals, especially girls, in the Western world.

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      Meta has created a Reddit competitor from Facebook Groups.

      Forum transforms group posts into a standalone app focused on questions, AI responses, and niche communities.

      Meta has quietly introduced Forum, an app for Facebook Groups that aggregates community answers in a more streamlined, standalone environment. The app offers Groups a new space for discussions, recommendations, and replies that would typically exist within Facebook. For anyone who has spent time sifting through years of group posts seeking a useful answer, Forum seems to be Meta’s effort to make that knowledge more accessible without redirecting users back into the main feed.

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