Elon Musk admits X is “underpaying” creators as new Starship test footage underscores momentum

Elon Musk says X’s payouts miss the mark—and points to YouTube as the reliability bar

Elon Musk acknowledged that X’s creator program isn’t paying accurately enough, calling out underpayment and misallocation of funds to eligible accounts. The remark lands at a delicate moment for the platform’s growth strategy: creator trust. By praising YouTube’s approach to monetization in the same breath, Musk effectively set a benchmark for what X must deliver—predictable revenue share, transparent accounting, and faster reconciliation of earnings.

Why it matters: creators optimize for certainty. If payouts wobble, the best talent hedges with platforms that close the loop cleanly every month. Musk’s admission reframes the challenge from “creators gaming the system” to “platform math and safeguards,” shifting the onus to engineering and finance to fix attribution, clamp down on fraud, and tighten the RPM denominator so impressions map cleanly to dollars.

What a payout reboot at X could look like

Expect a near-term reset built around three practical moves:

• Unified attribution: standardizing how views, watch time, and interactions get credited across posts, longform video, and live streams.

• Payment reliability: a locked revenue-share formula, less volatile month-to-month swings, and automatic reconciliation for underpaid periods.

• Brand safety linkage: clearer ad-suitability tiers so high-quality creators can command premium inventory without surprises.

If X ships this trio, mid-tier creators—those with loyal but not mega-scale audiences—are most likely to experiment with primary distribution on the platform. Advertisers benefit too; stable payouts often correlate with cleaner traffic, better viewability, and saner auction dynamics.

SpaceX’s Starship: precision visuals signal control authority gains

While the social-media business wrestles with payouts, Musk’s aerospace arm put out fresh visuals from Starship’s most recent test campaign. The standout clip shows the Super Heavy booster hovering briefly over the Gulf before committing to a controlled plunge. It’s not just spectacle. Hover hold implies improved throttle response and guidance fidelity—capabilities that underpin future catch attempts and, ultimately, rapid reusability economics.

These incremental control milestones matter because Starship’s thesis lives or dies on repeatability. A steady drumbeat of precision maneuvers—clean separation, stable attitude control, accurate splashdown—reduces technical risk, boosts recruiting, and helps partners plan around real timelines instead of vague aspirations. With the current vehicle generation winding down, footage like this points to a program maturing into routine operations rather than one-off triumphs.

Legal clouds thinning around X free up focus

A separate, long-running legal dispute tied to the Twitter acquisition moved toward closure recently, easing a distraction for the company’s leadership. Less time on litigation means more oxygen for the payout overhaul Musk just telegraphed. If X needs to front-load corrections for prior underpayments while it rebuilds advertiser confidence, shedding legal overhang makes that cash and attention easier to marshal.

The near-term scoreboard for Elon Musk’s ecosystem

• Creators on X: Watch for a published, stable revenue-share rubric and a clearer eligibility path for longform and live formats. Expect back-pay adjustments if underpayment gaps are formally recognized.

• Advertisers: If payout accuracy improves, expect adjacent upgrades—fraud detection, audience quality screens, and better suitability controls—that could justify experimental budgets returning to X.

• Space watchers: Look for the next cycle to emphasize catching hardware, heat-shield durability, and on-orbit propellant transfer demos. Each is a gating item for the promised cost curve.

Big picture: execution as the unifying theme

Across both companies, the through-line is operational credibility. Publicly admitting payout shortfalls sets a high bar for X to meet; releasing crisp Starship test visuals hints at a rocket program steadily closing control loops. If those threads hold—pay what’s earned, fly what’s planned—Elon Musk’s 2025 narrative shifts from controversy to competence, with creators getting dependable checks and rockets behaving with the predictability that true reuse demands.