Saturday, January 11, 2025
Reform MPs profiting from posting on Twitter
The papeer says that Farage, Anderson and Rupert Lowe MP have all declared thousands in payments from the company in their recent parliamentary register of interests, via billionaire Musk’s ‘Creator’ revenue programme:
The scheme allows premium users with more than 500 verified followers to ‘monetise’ their accounts on the controversial site, which has grown increasingly toxic since it was taken over by the Tesla tycoon in 2022.
More than £10,000 has been paid to the right-wing trio since July last year, with Mr Farage having earned the most so far, according to parliamentary filings. The Clacton-on-Sea MP, who has 2.2m followers, has made in excess of £5,000 since entering the scheme.
A Labour source told The Independent: “We’ve always known that - for every person who spreads hateful rhetoric on X because they want to divide our society - there is another set of grifters who do it just to make money. It looks like these Reform MPs fall in both categories, and no-one will be in the least bit surprised.”
Carla Denyer, MP for Bristol Central and Green Party co-leader, said the profits mark an “unholy alliance” between the right-wing and Elon Musk.
“The fact that Reform MPs are profiting financially from posting on Musk’s X tells us all we need to know about how genuine their motives are,” she said.
“Neither Musk nor Farage have ordinary people’s interests at heart. They don’t want to make people’s lives better, and they don’t value our democracy. They want to strip away protections for workers to make it easier for them and their super-rich buddies to make money, and don’t care what damage they do to our communities in the process.”
The paper adds that a former X/Twitter curator, who worked for the organisation for seven years, has warned of the dangers of monetising content:
Writing for this publication, Marc Burrows said: “Unlike traditional media, where editorial standards might temper the most inflammatory content, X’s monetisation strategy actively incentivises division.
“The more outraged people are, the more they engage. The more they engage, the more the poster earns. Truth, accuracy and adding value to public discourse are secondary concerns. This is about generating heat rather than light.”
The former curator, who left his post a month before Mr Musk arrived in protest, added: “By monetising outrage, X has created a self-perpetuating ecosystem where inflammatory content rises to the top, dragging political discourse ever further toward the extremes.”
This is how far this site has sunk.
