X demonetises major accounts accused of stealing video content

X is demonetising large accounts accused of building audiences by reposting other people’s video, after the platform’s product chief Nikita Bier publicly confirmed penalties against several high-profile “creator” profiles. Zerohedge reports that Disclose.tv was removed from monetisation after allegedly reposting footage of Blue Origin’s New Glenn test explosion with the original watermark cropped out, and that entrepreneur Mario Nawfal was warned to use X’s reshare tools rather than reuploading broadcast clips.

The enforcement push is framed as a protection of originators, but it also reads as a belated attempt to repair a business model that has been paying for the cheapest possible engagement. X’s creator payouts turn views into cash; the easiest way to manufacture views at scale is to strip attribution, repackage someone else’s reporting, and post at high frequency. Once that becomes normal, the platform attracts accounts optimised for extraction rather than production, and the credible publishers who supply the raw material learn that their work will be monetised by intermediaries.

Bier’s team says it is detecting programmatic re-uploads and watermark stripping “at scale”, suggesting the problem is not a handful of bad actors but an industrial workflow. One cited case involves Massimo Fracas (@Rainmaker1973), a large science-curation account that was removed from the creator programme after allegedly cropping watermarks from thousands of videos sourced from another account over six months. Another case cited by Zerohedge involves @bpthaber being demonetised for allegedly using secondary accounts to stamp stolen videos with a new watermark and then reposting them on a main account.

The mechanics matter because they show what X has chosen to measure. A platform that pays for impressions will get impression-maximising behaviour, including repost farms, rage-bait editing, and frictionless theft where the cost of being caught is occasional demonetisation. X is now offering a remedy that still keeps the underlying attention market intact: redirect the same impressions and revenue to “true originators”, rather than reducing the amplification of recycled content in the first place.

The crackdown also lands in public, through call-outs and visible punishment, because X’s enforcement credibility depends on being seen. Musk unfollowing Nawfal after a warning sparked speculation, but the more durable signal is that monetisation rules are becoming a form of platform governance: creators are being told what content is acceptable by the threat of income loss.

X can remove a payout badge in seconds. The watermark that was cropped out is harder to restore.