In early August, Elon Musk said X would only take a cut of its creators’ subscription revenue on the platform if their payouts topped $100,000 in lifetime earnings, a more generous offer than Musk’s prior deal, which delayed taking its 10% cut for the first 12 months of a creator’s subscription revenue. The move looked designed to attract more creators to sell subscriptions on X, which in turn could boost X’s non-advertising revenue. Notably, X requires creators to subscribe to its subscription offering, formerly Twitter Blue, in order to sell their own subscriptions. 

Musk was hardly going out on a limb by offering a free pass. As the chart above shows, social networks are offering to take little of creators’ subscription revenue to get these fledgling products going. Our update on subscription take rates, last published in January 2022, shows that Meta Platforms apps are the most generous. They aren’t taking any cuts until at least 2024, the company said in June 2022.