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Author: Cookie
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Earlier this month, CZ and Peter Schiff had an interesting debate on \”Bitcoin VS Gold\” at the Binance Blockchain Week. After watching the video of the debate, I browsed related discussion tweets on X, and as I looked, I suddenly noticed a problem…
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On YouTube, Binance’s official account has 1.22 million subscribers, but the debate video only garnered 160,000 views and 5,358 likes:
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Meanwhile, randomly searching for related topic tweets on X, such as 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:
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Such a data gap is quite significant. So, is Twitter (X) creating \”fake traffic\”?
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Is the View Count Calculation \”Exaggerated\”?
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Different from what we might imagine, X’s view count calculation is much more lenient—each tweet is counted as 1 view whenever it appears on a logged-in user’s device screen. That means, even if the user doesn’t notice a tweet at all, as long as X’s algorithm recommends it to your timeline, and you scroll past it without even looking, it still counts as 1 view.
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This \”scroll +1\” view counting applies not only to the recommended content timeline but also in scenarios like search results, viewing all historical tweets of a specific X account, etc.
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Additionally, this counting is not \”unique,\” meaning for the same user, if the same tweet appears multiple times on the screen, the view counts will accumulate.
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So, if you open the creator center of an X account, you’ll notice the term used is not \”views\” but \”impressions.\” X’s view count calculation is mainly used to measure the exposure of a post, not actual engagement (such as likes, retweets, or comments), even though the latter better reflects real interaction.
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So, is this \”exaggerated\”? A bit, but it’s hard to say.
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Let’s compare it horizontally with other social media platforms. Threads’ view count calculation is almost identical to X’s, both focusing on reflecting post exposure rather than actual interaction.
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For video-focused platforms like YouTube and TikTok, the threshold is instantly raised. For traditional long videos, YouTube requires over 30 seconds of watch time to count as a valid view. The scale of long-form video content is obviously much larger compared to short tweets, so requiring over 30 seconds of viewing is reasonable. For short videos on TikTok, it’s similar to X again, 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.
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The purpose of \”exaggeration\” is to better reflect the \”exposure\” of content. So why is this done?
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Actually, making tweet view counts publicly visible to everyone was an update brought after Musk acquired Twitter. Previously, only the poster could view the view count of a tweet. Musk personally tweeted explaining the reason for this update:
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\”Twitter is far more active than it appears, because 90% of Twitter users only read tweets but do not post, like, or comment.\”
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Musk also mentioned in the above tweet, \”For video, this is just normal practice.\” At that time, Twitter had just been acquired by Musk, followed by massive layoffs and the controversy over Twitter’s \”Blue V paid subscription.\” Mockery like \”Twitter is dead\” was rampant then.
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It’s hard to say that Musk didn’t have a \”counterattack\” mentality when choosing to open up view count data at that time. After all, even his own AI Grok said this:
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And this \”exaggeration\” might not just be our individual perception. According to a Yahoo news report, former Twitter employees stated that the reason for not opening view count data was that \”it’s difficult to determine whether a tweet was actually read or just scrolled past by users.\”
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Thus, how to define whether a tweet \”has been effectively read\” is inherently challenging. Musk certainly had a \”counterattack\” purpose, but he was also telling the truth. For tweets, simplifying this view count metric is necessary because many tweets (like memes, etc.) don’t require deep user engagement but focus on the widest top of the funnel—attracting as many users as possible.
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Prioritizing exposure over deep interaction, high visibility over deep reachability, is what X and Musk prioritize.
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Finding \”Reality\” in \”Exaggeration\”
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Of course, if only high visibility is pursued, creators might fall into another extreme—prioritizing quantity over quality. If so, over time, Twitter would decline due to low-quality content.
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Therefore, view count is not the only core metric creators should pursue. Most creators work hard on content to pursue 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 run this far and are ahead of many people; keep going.
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To have commercial monetization potential, building view count is the first step. But even with high view counts, if the content doesn’t attract ads—like sensitive topics targeting specific groups or short-term trend-chasing—income can still be zero.
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On Twitter, \”Creator Revenue Sharing\” is clearly the compass for finding \”reality\” in \”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 helping creators produce viral content better.
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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 been paid out.
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To qualify for creator revenue sharing, one must first meet the thresholds—verified identity, Twitter Premium membership, 500 Premium member followers, and at least 5 million cumulative views over 3 months.
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