At the beginning of this month, CZ had an interesting debate on 'Bitcoin VS Gold' with Peter Schiff at the Binance Blockchain Week. After watching the video of this debate, I browsed related discussion tweets about the debate on X, and while watching, I suddenly discovered a problem...
On YouTube, Binance's official account has 1.22 million subscribers, but the debate video only garnered 160,000 views and 5,358 likes:
And casually searching for related topic tweets on X, like the one in the image below, this X account has only about 250,000 followers, but the views reached 517,000, with over 4,100 likes:
Such a data gap cannot be said to be insignificant. So, is Twitter (X) creating 'fake traffic'?
Is view count calculated too 'showily'?
The way view count is calculated is somewhat different from what we imagined; X's view count calculation is much more lenient than expected—every tweet counts as one view as long as it appears on a logged-in user's device screen. This means that even if a user completely ignores a certain tweet, as long as the tweet is recommended to your timeline by X's algorithm, even if you just swipe down without looking, it still counts as one view.
It's not just about the timeline of recommended content; in scenarios like search results or viewing all historical tweets from a certain X account, counting this kind of 'swipe away +1' view count is valid.
At the same time, this counting is not 'unique'; for the same user, if the same tweet appears multiple times on the screen, the view count will accumulate.
So, if you open the creator center of an X account, you will find that the term for view count is not 'views' but 'impressions.' X's view count calculation is mainly used to measure the exposure of posts, rather than actual engagement (like likes, retweets, or comments), even though the latter better reflects real interaction.
So, does this count as 'showiness'? Indeed, it does a bit, but it's hard to say.
Let's horizontally compare other social media platforms. The view count calculation method of Threads is almost identical to that of X, mainly focusing on reflecting post exposure rather than actual interaction.
In contrast, platforms like YouTube and Tiktok, which focus on video, have significantly higher thresholds. For traditional long videos, YouTube requires a viewing duration of over 30 seconds to count as an effective view. The scale of long video content is obviously much larger than short tweets, so requiring views longer than 30 seconds is reasonable. As for short videos on Tiktok, it's not much different from X, especially on the auto-play recommendation page—just like X—once the video appears on the user's device screen, view count increases by +1, even if the user swipes away without watching.
The purpose of 'showiness' is to better reflect the content's 'exposure.' So why is that?
In fact, everyone can view the view count of a tweet, which is an update brought about after Musk acquired Twitter. Previously, only the poster themselves could see the view count of their tweets. Musk personally tweeted to explain the reason for such an update:
'Twitter is far more active than it appears because 90% of Twitter users only read but do not tweet, like, or comment.'
In that tweet, Musk also mentioned, 'For video, this is just normal operation.' At that time, Twitter had just been acquired by Musk, followed by large-scale layoffs and the controversy over Twitter's 'Blue V paid subscription,' with the mockery of 'Twitter is dead' rising and falling.
It's hard to say that Musk's choice to open view count data at that time was not motivated by a sense of 'retaliation.' After all, even his own AI Grok has said so:
And this 'showiness' may not just be our individual perception. According to a news report from Yahoo, a former Twitter employee stated that the reason for not opening view count data is that 'it's hard to determine if a tweet has been genuinely read or just skimmed over by users.'
It is evident that defining whether a tweet 'has been effectively read' is itself difficult. While Musk certainly has a purpose in 'retaliating,' what he says is also the truth. For tweets, simplifying this view count metric is actually necessary because many tweets (like memes, etc.) do not require deep user engagement but focus on attracting as many users as possible at the top of the funnel.
Prioritizing exposure over deep interaction, high visibility over deep reach, is what X and Musk need most.
Seeking 'truth' within 'showiness'
Of course, if only high visibility is pursued, creators may fall into another extreme—seeking quantity over quality. If this is the case, in the long run, Twitter will also decline due to low-quality content.
Therefore, view count is not the only core metric that creators pursue. Most creators work hard to produce content for monetization. For creators, income is a measurable reward that can incentivize high-quality content creation. View count is much like a rest stop in a marathon—congratulations, you've run this far and are ahead of many others; keep it up.
To be able to have the energy for commercial monetization, increasing view count is the first step. However, even with high view count, if the content does not attract advertisers—such as sensitive topics that attract specific groups or short-term trends—the income will still be zero.
On Twitter, 'creator revenue sharing' is clearly the compass that seeks 'truth' within the 'showiness.' To measure an account's influence, creator revenue sharing is far more important than view count because to obtain Twitter's creator revenue sharing, view count is just a threshold and one of the metrics that assist creators in producing viral content.
Twitter's creator revenue sharing (Ads Revenue Sharing) was launched in July 2023. Former Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino revealed in May 2024 that over $50 million has been paid out in creator revenue sharing.
To obtain creator revenue sharing, the thresholds must first be met—certified identity, opening a Twitter Premium membership, having 500 Premium member followers, and accumulating at least 5 million views within 3 months.
But as we mentioned above, creating view count is just the beginning. Creator revenue sharing is calculated based on the verified (Premium members) interaction volume of tweets (such as likes and replies), and it also considers the influence of different content types, such as articles, videos, Spaces, and live broadcasts.
Therefore, on Twitter, we can also see a creator with 330,000 followers earning over $2,000 a month:
You can also see a creator with only 13,000 followers earning over $1,000 a month:
In October last year, Twitter officially announced that the source of creator revenue sharing would no longer be based on advertising revenue appearing in the comments but rather on the subscription revenue from Twitter Premium members. This move aims to encourage more quality creators to emerge—let's grow the cake together; the more people pay Twitter, the more we will pay creators.
In November this year, Twitter launched a new feature called 'Bangers,' which periodically selects quality tweets based on their real interaction volume and awards creators with a 'Bangers' badge. This function, like a 'tweet hall of fame,' provides another basis for us to seek 'truth' within the 'showiness.'
Conclusion
Perhaps the present moment we live in is the most able to prove that 'courage is the most important quality for success.' The first step for creators is indeed 'to bravely express oneself,' which is also a core quality of a qualified creator.
In the current era, where live-streaming and self-media have quietly changed the work ecosystem for many years, we all say, 'traffic equals money.' But the first step to making money is the view count that accumulates behind the screen: +1, +1, and +1, and you, who bravely express yourself, are already at the starting line.
Now that you can see how Twitter creates 'fake traffic,' will you start today to create your own real traffic?
