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 related discussion posts on X, and as I scrolled, I suddenly noticed 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:

Meanwhile, a simple search for related topic posts on X, like the one in the image below—this X account has only about 250,000 followers, but the view count reached 517,000, with over 4,100 likes:

The disparity in these numbers is quite significant. So, is Twitter (X) creating "fake traffic"?

Exaggerated View Count Calculation?

Differing from what we might expect, X's view count calculation is much more lenient—each post is counted as 1 view whenever it appears on the screen of a logged-in user's device. This means that even if the user doesn't notice a particular post at all, as long as X's algorithm recommends it to your timeline, even if you scroll past it without looking, it still counts as 1 view.

This applies not only to the recommended content timeline but also to scenarios like search results and viewing all historical posts of a specific X account.

Moreover, this counting is not "unique"—meaning for the same user, if the same post appears multiple times on the screen, the views will be accumulated each time.

So, if you open the creator center of an X account, you'll notice that the term used for views is not "views" but "impressions." X's view count calculation is primarily used to measure the exposure of a post rather than actual engagement (such as likes, reposts, or comments), even though the latter better reflects genuine interaction.

So, is this "exaggerated"? It certainly seems so, but it's hard to say definitively.

Let's compare it horizontally with other social media platforms. Threads' view calculation method is almost identical to X's, both focusing on reflecting post exposure rather than actual interaction.

For video-centric platforms like YouTube and TikTok, the threshold is significantly higher. For traditional long-form videos, YouTube requires a watch time of over 30 seconds to count as an effective view. Given the larger scale of long-form video content compared to short posts, requiring over 30 seconds of watch time is reasonable. For short-form videos on TikTok, it's similar to X, especially on the auto-playing recommendation page—as long as the video appears on the user's device screen, the view count increases by 1, even if the user scrolls past without watching.

The purpose of this "exaggeration" is to better reflect the "exposure" of content. But why is this necessary?

Actually, making view counts visible to everyone was an update introduced after Musk acquired Twitter. Previously, only the poster could view the view count of a post. Musk personally tweeted to explain the reason for this update:

In the above tweet, Musk also mentioned, "For video, it's just standard practice." 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." Mockery like "Twitter is dead" was rampant.

It's hard to say that Musk's decision to open up view count data at that time wasn't driven by a desire to "counterattack," especially since even his own AI, Grok, said this:

This "exaggeration" might not just be our individual perception. According to a Yahoo news report, former Twitter employees stated that the reason view count data wasn't made public was that "it's difficult to determine whether a tweet was actually read or merely scrolled past by the user."

Clearly, defining whether a tweet has been "effectively read" is inherently challenging. While Musk undoubtedly had a "counterattack" motive, he was also telling the truth. For tweets, this simplification of the view metric is necessary because many tweets (such as memes, etc.) don't require deep user engagement but focus on the widest top of the funnel—attracting as many users as possible.

Prioritizing exposure over deep interaction, high visibility over deep reachability, is what X and Musk prioritize.

Finding "Reality" in the "Exaggeration"

Of course, if the sole pursuit is high visibility, creators might fall into another extreme—prioritizing quantity over quality. If this happens, Twitter could eventually decline due to low-quality content.

Therefore, view count is not the only core metric creators should pursue. The vast majority of creators work hard to produce content with the goal of monetization. For creators, income is a measurable return that incentivizes high-quality content creation. View count is like a rest stop in a marathon—congratulations, you've already covered this much distance and are ahead of many others; keep going.

To have the potential for commercial monetization, building view count is the first step. But even with high views, if the content doesn't attract advertisers—for example, sensitive topics that appeal to specific groups or short-term trend-chasing—income can still be zero.

On Twitter, the "Creator Revenue Sharing" is clearly the compass for finding "reality" in the "exaggeration." To measure an account's influence, creator revenue sharing is far more important than view count because to qualify for Twitter's creator revenue sharing, view count is just a threshold and one of the metrics to help creators produce viral content better.

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 had already been paid out.

To qualify for creator revenue sharing, one must first meet the thresholds—verified identity, Twitter Premium membership, having 500 Premium member followers, and accumulating at least 5 million views within 3 months.

But as mentioned above, building view count is just the beginning. Creator revenue sharing is calculated based on the verified (Premium member) engagement of the post (such as likes and replies), while also considering the influence of different content types, such as articles, videos, Spaces, and live streams.

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

And creators with only 13,000 followers earning over $1,000 a month:

In October of last year, Twitter officially announced that the source of creator revenue sharing would no longer be based on ad revenue from comments but on the subscription revenue from Twitter Premium members. 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 creators.

This November, Twitter launched a new feature called "Bangers," which, based on the genuine engagement of tweets, periodically selects high-quality tweets through official evaluation and awards the creator's account with a "Bangers" subsidiary badge. This "Tweet Hall of Fame"-like feature provides another basis for finding "reality" in the "exaggeration."

Conclusion

Perhaps the present moment is the best proof of the view that "courage is the most important quality for success." The first step for a creator is precisely "have the courage to express yourself," and this is also the core quality of a qualified creator.

In an era where live streaming e-commerce and self-media have quietly transformed the work ecosystem for years, we often say, "traffic is money." But the first step to earning money is the view count ticking up +1, +1, and +1 behind the screen. And by courageously expressing yourself, you are already at the starting line.

Now that you understand how Twitter creates "fake traffic," will you start today to create your own real traffic?