Earlier this month, CZ and Peter Schiff had an interesting "Bitcoin VS Gold" debate at the Binance Blockchain Week. After watching the video of this debate, I browsed on X to read related discussion tweets, and as I was reading, I suddenly stumbled upon a question...

On YouTube, Binance's official account has 1.22 million subscribers, but the video of the debate only garnered 160,000 views and 5,358 likes:

However, just casually searching for related topic tweets on X, like the one in the image below, this X account has around 250,000 followers, but the views reached 517,000 and received over 4,100 likes:

Such a significant disparity in data cannot be ignored, so, is Twitter (X) generating "fake engagement"?

Are View Counts Exaggerated?

View counts on X are calculated somewhat differently from what we might imagine. X's view count calculation is much more lenient—every time a tweet appears on a logged-in user's screen, it is counted as 1 view. This means that even if a user didn't actually notice a particular tweet and just scrolled past it on their timeline, it still counts as 1 view.

Not only is this "scroll-by +1" view count valid for timeline-recommended content, but it also applies to scenarios like search results, viewing all historical tweets from a specific X account, and so on.

Moreover, this counting is not "unique"; for the same user, if the same tweet appears multiple times on their screen, all those views will be accumulated.

Therefore, if you open X's Creator Dashboard, you'll notice that the term used for view count is not "views" but "impressions." X's view count calculation primarily aims to measure a post's exposure and not actual engagement (such as likes, retweets, or comments), even though the latter better reflects real interaction.

So, is this a bit exaggerated? Indeed, it is somewhat, but it's not easy to say.

Let's make a comparison with other social media platforms. Threads' view count calculation method is almost identical to X's, mainly focusing on showcasing a post's exposure rather than actual interaction.

When it comes to video-centric platforms like YouTube and TikTok, the bar has been raised instantaneously. For traditional long-form videos, YouTube requires a view duration of over 30 seconds to count as a valid view. The scale of long videos is significantly larger compared to short-form tweets, hence requiring a 30-second view seems reasonable. On the other hand, for short-form TikTok videos, the requirement is not much different, especially on the autoplayed For You page, which is similar to Twitter — as soon as the video appears on the user's screen, the view count increments by +1, even if the user scrolls past without actually watching.

The purpose of this "exaggeration" is to better reflect the content's "exposure." But why do it this way?

Actually, everyone can now view the view count of a tweet, thanks to Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Previously, only the poster could see a tweet's view count. Musk himself tweeted the reason for this update:

"Twitter seems much more active than it actually is because 90% of Twitter users only read and don't tweet, like, or comment"

In the above tweet, Musk also mentioned, "For videos, this is just standard operation." At that time, Twitter had just been acquired by Musk, followed by extensive layoffs and the Twitter "Blue V Premium Subscription" controversy, with mocking cries of "Twitter is dead" echoing at that time.

It's difficult to say whether Musk chose to open view count data at that time without a "counterattack" mentality because even his own AI, Grok, said so:

This kind of "exaggeration" may not just be our individual perception. According to a Yahoo news report, some Twitter employees previously stated that the reason for not opening view count data was because "it's difficult to determine whether a tweet has been actually read or just scrolled past by the user."

It is evident that determining whether a tweet has been "effectively read" is itself a challenge. While Musk certainly had a "counterattack" motive, he was also speaking the truth. For tweets, this simplification of the view count metric is actually necessary because many tweets (like memes) do not require deep user engagement but rather focus on the widest, most top-level part of the funnel — attracting as many users as possible.

Priority exposure over deep interaction, high visibility over deep engagement, this is what X and Musk prioritize.

Seeking "Authenticity" in "Extravagance"

Of course, if only high visibility is pursued, creators are likely to fall into another extreme—seeking quantity over quality. If that's the case, Twitter will eventually decline due to the low quality of content.

Therefore, page views are not the sole core metric that creators should pursue. The vast majority of creators work hard to create content, also aiming for monetization. For creators, income is a measurable return that can motivate high-quality content creation. Page views are like rest stops along a marathon—congratulations, you have run a long way ahead of many others, keep up the effort.

To have the commercialization power, increasing page views is the first step, but even with high page views, if the content does not attract ads, such as by focusing on sensitive topics that attract specific audiences or short-term trends, income may still remain at 0.

On Twitter, "Creator Revenue Sharing" is clearly the compass for seeking "Authenticity" in "Extravagance." To measure an account's influence, Creator Revenue Sharing is much more important than page views, because to receive Twitter's Creator Revenue Sharing, page views are just a threshold and one of the indicators that assist creators in producing better-selling 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 in Creator Revenue Sharing has been paid out.

To qualify for Creator Revenue Sharing, first, you must meet the threshold—verify your identity, open a Twitter Premium account, have 500 Premium member followers, and accumulate at least 5 million page views in 3 months.

But as we mentioned above, increasing page views is just the beginning. Creator Revenue Sharing is calculated based on verified (Premium member) interaction metrics of tweets, such as likes and replies, and also takes into account the influence of different content types, such as articles, videos, Spaces, and live broadcasts.

Therefore, on Twitter, we can see a creator with 330,000 followers earning over $2,000 in a month:

You can also see that a creator with only 13,000 followers earns over $1,000 in a month:

In October last year, Twitter officially announced that the source of creator revenue share is no longer based on ad revenue appearing in the comment section but on Twitter Premium membership subscription revenue. This move aims to encourage more high-quality creators to emerge—let's grow the pie together; the more people pay Twitter, the more we pay the creators.

In November this year, Twitter launched a new feature called "Bangers," which periodically selects some quality tweets based on true engagement for an official honor and awards the creator account a "Bangers" affiliated badge. This "Tweet Hall of Fame" feature provides another criterion for us to find "authenticity" in the "exaggeration."

Conclusion

Perhaps the present moment we are in is the most capable of proving the viewpoint that "courage is the most important quality for success." The first step for a creator is precisely to "bravely express oneself," which is also a core quality of a qualified creator.

In the current environment where live streaming for sales and self-media has quietly transformed the work ecosystem for many years, we all say, "traffic is money." But the first step to making money is precisely the behind-the-screen accumulation of views, one by one, and you, bravely expressing yourself, have already stepped onto the starting line.

Now that you have seen how Twitter manufactures "fake traffic," will you start today to create your authentic traffic?

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