At the beginning of this month, CZ and Peter Schiff engaged in an interesting “Bitcoin VS Gold” debate during Binance Blockchain Week. After watching the video of this debate, I browsed related discussion tweets on X. As I scrolled, I suddenly noticed an issue…

On YouTube, Binance’s official channel has 1.22 million subscribers, but the debate video only received 160,000 views and 5,358 likes:

Meanwhile, a quick search on X for related topic tweets, such as the one shown in the image below—this X account only has about 250,000 followers, but its views reached 517,000, with over 4,100 likes:

The gap in these metrics is quite significant. So, is Twitter (X) generating “fake traffic”?

Are View Counts “Exaggerated”?

Contrary to what we might imagine, X’s view count calculation is much more lenient—each tweet is counted as 1 view as soon as it appears on a logged-in user’s device screen. That means, even if a user doesn’t notice a particular tweet 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 “scroll-past +1” view counting applies not only to the recommended content timeline but also to scenarios like search results and viewing all historical tweets of a specific X account.

Moreover, this counting is not “unique”—meaning if the same tweet appears multiple times on a user’s screen, the views are accumulated each time.

Therefore, 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, retweets, 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 this horizontally with other social media platforms. Threads’ view count 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 much 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 tweets, requiring over 30 seconds of watch time is reasonable. For short-form videos on TikTok, the calculation is similar to X’s, especially on the auto-playing recommendation page—as soon as a video appears on a 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?

In fact, making tweet view counts publicly accessible to everyone was an update introduced after Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Previously, only the poster could view the view count of their tweets. Musk himself tweeted to explain the reason for this update:

“Twitter is far more active than it appears, because 90% of Twitter users only read tweets without posting, liking, or commenting.”

In the same tweet, Musk also mentioned, “For videos, this is just standard 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.

It’s hard to say that Musk didn’t have a “counterattack” mindset when he chose to open up view count data. After all, 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 for not opening view count data was that “it’s difficult to determine whether a tweet was genuinely read or simply scrolled past by users.”

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, simplifying the view count metric is necessary because many tweets (such as memes) 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 reach, is what X and Musk prioritize.

Finding “Reality” in the “Exaggeration”

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

Therefore, view count is not the sole core metric creators should chase. Most 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 counts are like rest stops in a marathon—congratulations, you’ve covered this much distance and are ahead of many others; keep going.

To have the potential for commercial monetization, building view counts is the first step. However, even with high view counts, if the content doesn’t attract advertisers—such as sensitive topics targeting specific groups or short-term trend-chasing—income can still remain zero.

On Twitter, “Creator Revenue Sharing” is clearly the compass for finding “reality” within the “exaggeration.” To measure an account’s influence, creator revenue sharing is far more important than view counts. To qualify for Twitter’s creator revenue sharing, view counts are just a threshold and one of the metrics to help creators produce viral content more effectively.

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 had already been paid out in creator revenue sharing.

To qualify for creator revenue sharing, certain thresholds must be met—verified identity, an active Twitter Premium subscription, at least 500 Premium follower subscribers, and a cumulative view count of at least 5 million over three months.

But as mentioned above, building view counts is just the beginning. Creator revenue sharing is calculated based on verified (Premium subscriber) interactions (such as likes and replies) on tweets, 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 appearing in comment sections but rather on Twitter Premium subscription revenue. This move aims to encourage more high-quality creators—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 periodically selects high-quality tweets based on genuine interaction metrics and awards the creator accounts with “Bangers” affiliate badges. This “Tweet Hall of Fame”-like feature provides another basis for finding “reality” within the “exaggeration.”

Conclusion

Perhaps the present moment is the best proof of the idea that “bravery is the most important quality for success.” The first step for creators is precisely “bravely expressing oneself,” which 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 +1, +1, and +1 view counts behind the screen. By bravely expressing yourself, you’ve already stepped onto the starting line.

Now that you understand how Twitter generates “fake traffic,” will you start creating your own genuine traffic from today?