I said this last time, and I'm saying it now: X desperately needs an official comms department.

But even the best efforts of the platform cannot halt the rush to self-deliver a hoof-to-the-mind with each rebuttal and shared figure - many of which don't even agree with themselves, are bereft of context, or actually support the claim they're trying to head off.

Case in point: The Wall Street Journal published a story over the weekend that begged questions about X's new creator ad revenue share program and the validity of X's pitch to creators. Allegedly, many are concerned about X's lack of transparency, inconsistent payouts, lack of creator management tools, etc.
So basically, in response, X says: It paid out $45 million to creators in 7 months, through a monetization pathway that didn't even exist under Twitter. So that's actually a really great thing, and the criticism is invalid .

But the data that X has shared actually reinforces the main point of the WSJ article.

Back in June last year, when X began paying creators for ads served in their post replies-which was 9 months ago, to be clear-Elon Musk announced that the first block payout would total $5 million, backdated to February. Then 3 months later, in September, X CEO Linda Yaccarino reported that X had paid out a total of $20 million in total to creators via the program.

So, averaging it out, X was paying in the area of $5 million per month to creators for ad share by September, with that initial $5 million in early payouts feeding into the $20 million total.

Now it would have been six months since September, which would mean, assuming an average of $5 million per month, which doesn't allow for any expansion or other participants into the program, that X should have paid out an additional $30 million in payments. That would put the total paid out by the program, again assuming no expansion or growth in participants to a total of $50 million shared.

But the total, as X says, is actually $5 million less than that.

Which would mean that X is paying out less over time, while as WSJ notes, several participants have also complained about having their X monetization privileges stripped without warning, and seeing their ad share payouts dip significantly.

X's own data, which it is using to deny this, absolutely supports the claim that it's sharing less revenue with creators over time. Rather than adding more context, it is really supporting the contention of the WSJ post.

Part of the reason for this, X says, is that with less overall ad spend, it has less to then share with creators-and with X's ad revenue still down by about 50%, that also makes sense. But Elon Musk recently claimed that virtually all of X's advertisers are coming back, which should mean bigger payments for creators in future.
And as X notes, it's also working on video ads too, presumably pre and mid-rolls in longer content. So there may be more opportunities in future, but right now, X is still a long way behind other platforms in terms of creator monetization options.

Really, it's just a bit strange to see X trying to counter media reports with questionable numbers, which don't show what it seems to think.

Which an official comms team would be able to sort out, and communicate with media outlets. But apparently, that's not the way of the Musk.