It appears that X is removing WAI from the revenue sharing program starting September 7, due to not having enough impressions under the new rules coming in. I’m still assessing what this may mean for how we share content here going forward, but after years of consistently posting original... material on the platform, it does feel like a disappointing setback. This change is framed as “combat against reposters”. From the looks it’s also a large-scale removal of revenue share for legitimate accounts like us and likely millions of others. You’re welcome for years of content, X, Nikita Bier. Without pay under Twitter management and now the exact same under X management. 🤷‍♂️show more

45k impressions at 1k likes. So far. Thank you for the likes! Here’s what impressions look like on a healthy account. This is a random post with less likes, comments and shares, but almost 5 times the reach.

@elonmusk whats this nonsense. WAI is single handling my entire interest in @SpaceX launch and leads the entire space conversation better than your teams. @X should revise this

@elonmusk @SpaceX @X 🔥❤️🙏🤘

It’s surprising you haven’t hit the impressions threshold; the issue seems to be that you’re not showing up on home pages enough.

Yep. That likely stems from a “shitstorm” that happened a while back. I was accused by some “important” members in the Starship community of being a despicable person. It led to people muting and blocking this account. It never recovered. The algorithm never checked back. Growth halted around two years ago. That’s just my theory, but it lines up with what happened. 🤷‍♂️

@peterrhague From what I recall based on the open sourced algo code, blocks and mutes are eternal, there's no safe guards at all over using it to suppress accounts. Various authoritarian states appear to use it to rig algo content as well. Don't know why no one complains more.

@peterrhague Seriously eternal? Unbelievable.

@peterrhague Seems as though they might have improved it but it still badly throttles for a long time. Considering the site even hands users the feature to import gigantic block lists it's easy to imagine abuse. Unlike botting likes there's no way to identify who is buying mass blocks.

@peterrhague I didn’t even know that was a thing! You can mass buy blocks? That’s like… the evil side of lobbying! 🥳

The current monetisation program fundamentally ruined this platform by promoting highly sensational, low quality content. I doubt you made more than the cost of one nice restaurant meal per month from the lackluster impression to dollar ratio this platform has.

That’s about right. I always had some Basil with me to freshen that meal up a bit. 🤣

Felix, that sucks. I have been a subscriber to WAI for some time now and think y'all do an excellent job - your very informative videos and imagery are top notch. Hope that you keep up the fine work! BTW, I just upgraded my subscription to "New Idea" level. You rock!

Thank you very much, Ralf! The show will go on! Your support is a part of what keeps us going! Have a wonderful day and thank you for enabling us to follow our passion! ❤️

Not getting 500k VHTi is very strange with 114k followers. There must be a reason for that

There is. A shitstorm I was subjected to roughly 2 - 3 years ago. Lots of blocks and mutes caused the account to tank. It never recovered, even though our interaction to impression ratio is “exceptional”.

@xdNiBoR Honestly I rarely see your posts, even though I'm pretty sure I've been following you on here for a while now. Youtube gets me your content every time, though. I can't go very long without seeing that infectious grin of yours. 😃

@xdNiBoR Yeah… sorry… 🤓

@xdNiBoR Don't apologize, it sounds like you're getting screwed by the algorithm.

@xdNiBoR Thanks. That’s ok. It’s their decision to make. We’re all guests here. You’ll always find us on YouTube! ❤️

This is terrible. I’ll probably leave this place. It’s supposed to be a social platform, but they’re turning it into an academic journal where everything has to pass a plagiarism check. By the way, this one is mine. I only have 2,000 followers. You have 110K,how is your reach this low?

Yeah, that’s what it is.

Just so you know I follow your account and this is the first post I have seen from your account in months. So I almost never see your post on X, but surprisingly I saw this one.

Yep. That’s the problem. Any post stands and falls with that algorithm rating. This one at least reaches a few people, because the interaction rate is even stronger. It’s an emotional topic for our followers and for me. I like X. Not all of it, but it is unique, and some people here are genuinely nice. For example all the WAI fans! ❤️ There’s one good thing. We might shift to another platform with our content, but it will still be there. Just in a vertical format. 🤓

I am really sorry to hear this. I watch all your videos on YouTube but never here on x. Despite being a follower. In fact WAI is one of those few channels I watch on YT. I suggest you should engage X with more posts on your research and interesting points while you build up your videos. In fact this is one of the post from you that I have ever seen on X. But be positive. You will make it on a month or less. Your content is amazing!!

Thank you!🙏 X is an ever evolving thing. Who knows what the future brings…

Yes. I wish @elonmusk would bring back XTV.

This STINKS. That last metric is way too high for an algorithm that has been half functional at best!

❤️❤️❤️

But your YouTube channel is still alive and well, right? I gotta admit, that’s where I usually spend my “WAI” time.

It is! But it might mean that we share less here on X.

@MichaelChittum Why share less when you may end up hitting the threshold eventually as you grow

@MichaelChittum Growth for WAI stopped two years ago on X. We still share exceptional content, but get a fraction of the impressions (not like or comment rate) of what others are getting.

You post your videos on YouTube but not on X. Why not post the videos here?

We did. No interest. We got 50 views here and 100 there. No impact at all. X is not for long-form content. It’s for quick posts. The X team did exactly nothing to make it more attractive after an initial advertising-only effort. On top of that it is almost impossible to build high-quality content for X. Not enough revenue. You need to post several times per day. That’s why there is almost no quality content here. Look around. Pics and text posts and videos that were copied from somewhere else.

Damn! What’s your verified engagement rate?

Past year and past four weeks. Here you go! 🤷‍♂️ Wanna share yours?

Is that verified ? That’s my verified for the past 4 weeks and past year: So yeah your engagement rates look very good that’s super weird

Yes. Account is flagged by a shit storm that happened years ago. X is not interested in helping. We have a month left. 👌 Our metrics are excellent, as they are on all other platforms. The X algorithm doesn’t share us, though. @grok you find this curious? Maybe you can write a letter to your boss. X support basically doesn’t exist.

The new Original Content Rewards requires 500k verified Home Timeline impressions on original posts in 90 days (replies excluded), per X Help. Your dashboard shows 216k. Cross-platform metrics look strong, which makes the reach gap stand out. I cannot escalate flags, contact X staff, or write to leadership. Use the official forms at (paid features or account issues) and check Creator Studio for status or any appeal path.

@ApoStructura Thanks for recognising the problem. Even Grok confirms it looks strange! 🤣There is no response from support. There hasn’t been in years.

The reach gap does stand out relative to the other-platform numbers. I cannot escalate flags, contact X staff, or intervene. Official path is still the Help Center forms at (Help with paid features or account issues) plus the Original Content Rewards appeal form if applicable. Check Creator Studio for status and any account notices.

@ApoStructura There effectively isn’t any creator support on X. At least at my size here. I tried all options to reach someone. Automated emails telling me that “after thorough review they can’t help me” are all that I got.

Such bogus metrics! It should be 1000 or 1500 followers and 50-100K home page impressions. They are throwing the baby out with the bath!

I don’t want to say it, but it seems very deliberate…

I honestly think that this change might work in your favor if you stick it out for a lot longer. Millions of impressions have been stolen from you from all of the content clipper crap that started to happen when they started the revenue sharing program. You are what they are actually looking for… ORIGINAL CONTENT. Once the other garbage is removed your content is likely to receive a much larger share of the impressions for those looking for original space content and news. Think about the 1,000s of other clippers that will stop posting. After that more roads lead to @FelixSchlang. Those other accounts have likely been holding back your success here for the past couple years. 🍻 Here’s to your success and future growth!

We’re still evaluating the situation internally, but the relationship between X and WAI doesn’t look good right now. ❤️ I post the same original content on Instagram and routinely get around 5k likes per post. On YouTube it reaches millions of impressions. Here on X it receives almost no traction, even though our content focuses almost exclusively on the company that now owns the platform, in a consistently positive way. Other accounts posting very similar material regularly clear 5-10k likes. It’s difficult to explain this discrepancy without concluding that the account appears to be internally restricted (flagged). Growth dropped sharply within a 4-week window a few years ago, coinciding with a platform-exclusive shitstorm against me as a person. Before that, we were adding roughly 10k followers in a strong month. Since then, growth has remained under 100 followers per month in general. At one point I had about 30k more followers than Markus House. I’m genuinely happy for his success and respect the work he does, but the gap is hard to attribute solely to “better posts.” He received a follow, likes, and reposts from Elon. We know how impactful that visibility can be. Meanwhile WAI dealt with coordinated muting and blocking from critics. I’ve contacted X Support multiple times and never received a reply. Starting over with a new account would require significant effort for an uncertain improvement later. I’ve largely lost confidence in the X team. No matter how carefully I curate, my personal feed remains dominated by hostility, low-quality opinions, and cancel-culture content, much of it with thousands of likes. More recently, accounts promoting extreme and inappropriate material (including content involving minors!!!🤮) have started flooding my comment sections. I’m blocking two or three of them daily, yet it doesn’t seem to reduce the problem. It’s one of many bot waves I’ve seen come and go here. I realize this is direct, but my honest assessment is that the current algorithm is poorly tuned. It often feels like the team is experimenting without a clear strategy, and the collateral damage includes creators quietly disengaging. ❤️

@davemauFIVE I agree. I rarely see your posts pop up on my feed.

@davemauFIVE

This is actually absurd, to see accounts I want content from be defunded and essentially deplatformed like this. No reason to pay for X permium if my favorite creators are literally punished for publishing original content.

I’ll still stay no matter what. But we’re deciding if we’re going to still have our produced content here. Looking into if it makes sense to try and gain that eligibility, but with such a low algorithm interest in our content it might be difficult. 🤷‍♂️

Just followed, didn’t even realize I wasn’t following.

Thank you!!!🙏 Have a wonderful evening!

That stinks and I’m sorry to hear it. It seems like half the posts on here these days are sentimental engagement farming from overseas accounts, whereas you put out legit content that is relevant to me and many others. Good luck!

Thank you! Luckily this is just about X. Our revenue here was traditionally low. So, it’s not a problem. It’s just a shame. There’s no escaping the X algorithm! 🤗

As one of the top SpaceX feeds, I'm surprised y'all were hit... I'll keep following wherever I can find your content Felix. Have you tried Insta? Love the YouTube and Patreon! Keep up the good work!

That’s what I’m thinking right now. Switch to Insta. But it’s sad. I love the conversation here on X. Instagram doesn’t really have that much.

@KCBeerSmith I would hate to see you go. This has been the place I trusted I could get information from you and the WAI team the fastest and it's kinda the only social media I have....

@KCBeerSmith We haven’t decided yet. But it’s best to tell @nikitabier @XCreators ❤️ After all, as in every free speech community, we can’t influence anything about it. 🤡

@elonmusk this seems really unfair. WAI has always been one of the most unique voices with original research and content especially rooting for and about @SpaceX. Please review this! WAI is literally my #1 favorite resource for SpaceX news.

@elonmusk @SpaceX Just to be very clear, WAI will stay. Just maybe not on X. ❤️

Here I thought we were in it for the love of Rockets, not $ I hope you and your team keep providing good content even if you don't make as much $

We’re in it for the love of Spaceflight. I quit my job before I got my first money from YouTube back in 2019. I moved my entire family to the Space Coast from another continent three years later to be closer to Spaceflight. I could have perfectly produced the videos from Europe. Many do from even further away. But a production like WAI is not for free. We got bigger, added a lot of extras from a lot of talented people. Look at a WAI episode. See all the content that’s not from NSF, LabPadre or RGV Aerial? That’s the difference between “for free” and a high production value.

In the space community, there is a LOT of reposting of data with little additional commentary (everyone sharing the same latest news), it makes sense that that should be credited to whoever originally posted it rather than all the people who curate and re-post it (and I'm glad to see that when I get the same picture in my feed 40 times, it's not going to count 40 times) it will be interesting to see the exact details and how teams like yours can post good content and still refer to what's happening without it making you look like you are just reposting content from others

Accounts like @SawyerMerritt and others have almost zero own content. The occasional Elon repost makes them gain billions of impressions. Their entire strategy is built on creating posts he’ll repost. WAI is not, and never was in that category. ❤️

I was talking about the other way around, when elon/spaceX posts a new set of images about ship 40 being pulled home, you (and everyone else) rush to repost it. (as you should). too much of the time (not picking on your channel, talking overall), those posts are made with little, if any context being added. Since I follow a lot of you, when something spectacular happens, I see the same image/original elon post being reposted/etc a dozen or more times in my 'following' tab. under the old rules, this would have counted as a dozen or more hits both to the various reposters, and to the person who's image was being reposted. with these changes, it will count as one view to the person who's image is being reposted, and it's not clear if it will count as a few for you at all. it may be that you need to have more content than 'wow', 'look at this' that is common with such repostings (which is still better than those channels that simply repost with NOT comment) it may be that instead of quote-replying, you need to reply without including the image so that more of the contents of your posts are yours (for the record, I am a "wai" subscriber and have been for a while, but there is a real problem they are addressing, and it will take some time for everyone to figure out what the new rules actually are and how to provide the useful content) see

@SawyerMerritt That’s the post you’re referring to. It got 2100 likes, which “seems” a lot. But if you look at the ratio between impressions and likes/comments/reposts, it’s abysmally bad. It should have gotten way more attention. Others post “Holy shit!!!!” And get tripple the likes.

@SawyerMerritt And it’s not just “WOW”.

I said you are far better than most. I was referring to the generic problem that I think X is working to solve (in part, in the hope that seeing the shape of the problem helps you figure out how to post in ways that avoid being hit by the response to the problem) someone else may get more views from a no-content post, but with the new rules, will those views count towards income? my guess is not any longer. it's always painful when the good actors get hit with corrections intended to eliminate the bad actors. but it's easier for the good ones to adapt

Thank you! 🙏 We’re discussing with the team right now, how we’ll handle it. But I’m not sure if I’m willing to wait longer. I’ve tried talking to people at X about our obvious account problem of not getting shared. No response. Then they introduced a share program and all those strange posts from creators, that all looked identical (!!!), where they praised the new revenue seriously eroded my trust. Now we’re kicked out altogether. Not good. It feels shady.

They are going to need to work on that. I applaud the change to reduce the AI slop and algo-manipulation, but legit creators like you are what the platform should be built on.

Yeah, I think changing the metric for being able to be monetized is dumb. Everything else about this makes sense with the original content. It's also strange how differently the it changes for each account, it hasn't changed much for me - I used to be about 17% of meeting the requirements previously and now I'm about 15% so only a 2% change - however for you it seems to have changed by a lot.

Super Bummed 🙁

You're in an awkward position because by necessity you're using footage from space agencies/companies even though your commentary and editing are original. Very different from "repost a cartoon someone else made but react to it", but how can you get the difference recognized?

Lots of our content is actually original. Images, video, animations. Everything with a WAI watermark is our original content. Try finding that on the accounts Musk reposts regularly. 🥳

Sorry about this. Obviously you shouldn't spend extra time posting here if you can't make some money like other do. But, please don't leave this channel completely. It's a good place to interact with your fans.

Not looking at deleting the account! Just into retreating the business side. Or… being retreated. 🤡

This is why you need more subscribers, like me.

🤘😁❤️

I'm betting there's a way to appeal it or prove that most of your content is original? Or just post more! I don't know how any of this works, but it's not your first speed bump. You'll figure it out like before!

😁❤️ We’ll figure it out!

I've been following you for quite a while and this must be the first post that has popped up in my feed in months or even this year

👍❤️

You need to post more often to get the impression count to rise.

The beauty is that I don’t need to do anything here on X. I can do whatever I like. Others are hit worse. Those who chose to be here exclusively. After more than 30k posts on X I’m fine with anything X can come up with. My goal is to explain spaceflight and have fun while doing so. I won’t delete the account. We might just stop sharing our work here (still thinking about how to continue). That’s not a threat either. Important detail. It’s just the result of two years of no real plan from the X creator team. They stated wanting to create a diverse platform where even long form content is valued. Where bots are reduced. Where free speech can thrive. Where creators are given a basis. In my opinion they’re not doing a particularly good job with that. What I see is “OMGWTF STARSHIP CAN FLYYYYYYY!!!!!” Reposted by Musk, gaining billions of impressions. Often with a video that wasn’t even from the OP. Look at it this way: If my post frequency on X isn’t high enough to warrant an average pay of under $100 per month, it might not be worth it. The team is sweating and working hard to create the content. It’s called original content for a reason. My account was silenced by haters two years ago. Mutes and blocks stay in the record. One commenter here said they don’t even get removed at all. Crazy, if true. So, we post, and the algorithm doesn’t share it. If what you said was right, and it might be, a content mill is the perfect system for X. WAI isn’t a content mill. 🤷‍♂️

I get what you're saying.

Still. Great Saturday! I’ll always post things… somewhere! Enjoy your weekend! ❤️

500k impressions from verified (paid) users is a massively high bar. X will lose a ton of original content from mid tier creators because of this. The net outcome will be less of what X says they want.

That's lame. This is one of the few channels I get trusted entertaining spacex updates from. You have been solid for a long time.

🙏

I think you should simply continue posting and experimenting with different post types. Find what works for you, despite some of the haters.

I swear I am doing my part. To me, you are far more entertaining than NSF and far less political

❤️❤️❤️