X has updated its Premium+ subscription tier so that paying users don’t have to see any advertisement at all. The website formerly known as Twitter has announced that Premium+, which costs $16 a month in the US, is now fully ad-free. While one of the tier’s original perks is having an ad-free For You and Following timelines, subscribers still saw advertisements on other parts of the social network.
As Social Media Today points out, the FAQ page for X’s subscriptions used to say that the no-ads feature for Premium+ “does not apply to promoted content elsewhere on X, including but not limited to ads on profiles, ads in post replies, ads in Immersive Media Viewer, promoted events in Explore, promoted trends, and promoted accounts to follow.”
Some users in that announcement thread on X have expressed concerns about the company’s revenue-sharing scheme. People can earn on the social network by getting some of X’s ad revenue, but they can only earn money for an add if a fellow verified user sees it. That is why X engineer Eric Farraro had to write a post answering a common complaint from creators that their payouts were lower than expected. “Revenue is only earned for ads shown to Verified users. This is one of many ways we mitigate attempts to manipulate the program,” he tweeted. Since ads had been limited for Premium+ subscribers from the start, though, this might not have a big impact on the revenue amount X can share with its users. People paying for the basic tier, the cheapest option at $3 a month, will continue seeing ads like usual.
