X Content Order Reshuffle: Three New Rules Redefining Value Hierarchy

Author: Ethan, Odaily Planet Daily

On January 22, Odaily updated its "Global Trends" page. After a series of adjustments regarding content and incentive mechanisms, Odaily Planet Daily found that the platform has added a separate Meme category section. Various memes, funny images, and short videos are presented in a concentrated manner, allowing users to directly observe the current Meme themes and emotional trends spreading both on and off the platform.

At first glance, this seems more like a somewhat entertaining content organization. However, when placed within the context of X's recent intensive content governance actions, the emergence of this Meme section appears less "lightweight."

In X's product logic, content is being re-layered: which belongs to emotional expression, and which is regarded as information assets. The platform is beginning to provide clearer boundaries through its interface and categorization.

It is against this backdrop that X has recently tightened creator incentives and API usage rules, clearly stating that reply interactions will no longer count towards earnings, ultimately targeting the InfoFi application model that relies on external incentives to drive posting and interaction. In the crypto community, this series of changes has quickly been interpreted as a signal— the platform is no longer willing to cede space for "high interaction, low information density" content paths.

From the detail of Meme being singled out, it can be seen that X's adjustment is not merely about shutting down old mechanisms, but rather about simultaneously building a new content order.

Why has "mouth farming" become ineffective? X's answer is more direct than "traffic limits"

In the past week, X has pointed out through a series of interrelated rule adjustments that X is redefining what kind of behavior is worth monetizing.

The change is first reflected in the creator income rules. On January 19, X's product head Nikita Bier explicitly stated in response to user concerns that current creator income is calculated solely based on the views of content on the homepage timeline, and exposure generated from replies will no longer count towards earnings. This is almost equivalent to directly overturning a long-accepted growth logic—interaction itself no longer holds monetization value.

X product head Nikita Bier responds to user concerns on X

Under the new valuation system, whether it is high-frequency replies, concentrated spamming, or relying on low-cost content like "gm" and "+1" to maintain activity, as long as it does not push content onto the homepage timeline, it will no longer be regarded as a valid contribution by the platform.

This change did not occur in isolation. In subsequent explanations, X further elaborated on the logic behind it: the actual amount of content an ordinary user can browse daily is extremely limited. Excessive posting and frequent interaction do not expand influence; instead, they prematurely consume the account's exposure quota for the day. When truly important information is released, the account often has "no quota available."

In other words, in X's judgment, excessive interaction is not suppressed but viewed as an inefficient or even self-destructive behavior pattern.

This stance also resonates with Nikita Bier's previous public criticism of the crypto community. In his view, the decline in the influence of crypto tweets is not due to deliberate suppression by the platform's algorithm, but rather the community's long-term reliance on low-value interactions leading to self-consumption.

As a result, X does not deny the existence of "mouth farming," but chooses a more direct and calm approach: no longer paying for such behavior.

When reply views are entirely stripped from the incentive system, the content model that relies on "interaction arbitrage" naturally loses its foundation. The so-called "end of the mouth farming era" is not a targeted cleansing but an inevitable result of the adjustment in the valuation system.

The real background of Smart Cashtags: X wants to turn "market sentiment" into a consumable object

While reshaping creator incentive rules, X is also simultaneously advancing another more directional product path—Smart Cashtags.

According to public statements from X product head Nikita Bier, this feature allows users to directly tag specific tokens or smart contracts when posting content related to market trends or assets. Users can click on the tags in the timeline to view the real-time prices of the corresponding assets and all related discussions on the platform. This feature is still in the testing and feedback stage, and the official release of Version 1 has been clearly anticipated (expected to be launched next month).

This means that Smart Cashtags is no longer just a concept validation but has entered the final polishing stage before functionality is finalized.

Related tweet and Smart Cashtags testing page

Initially, the community viewed it more as a market tool to enhance user experience. However, as discussions deepened, the focus of skepticism gradually shifted to several more fundamental questions:

------ If the asset has not yet been listed on mainstream exchanges, does X have reliable data coverage capabilities?

------ Is its price and on-chain information solely reliant on centralized exchanges?

------ Will it further extend to wallets or trading execution layers in the future?

In response to the first two questions, Nikita Bier provided relatively clear answers. He stated that the API used by X will "almost be able to process any content minted on-chain in real-time," implying that the data sources for Smart Cashtags are not limited to centralized trading platforms but have the capability to directly interface with on-chain information.

However, he did not directly respond to whether it would support self-custody wallets or allow trading through CEX widgets within X, only passing it off with a "follow" emoji. This deliberately reserved attitude has sparked more speculation in the community about X's next steps.

If we place Smart Cashtags back into X's existing strategic trajectory, this "blank space" is not surprising.

By 2025, X had already obtained remittance-related licenses in over 40 states in the U.S. and was simultaneously advancing the compliance construction of the X Money payment system. At that time, these actions were viewed more as part of the "Everything App" narrative, still seeming distant from the content ecosystem.

Entering January 2026, the pace of advancing Smart Cashtags began to clarify: the feature was publicly discussed for the first time, followed by supplementary details on the API layer, accompanied by information leaks regarding compliance and legal aspects. By late January, although still in the testing phase, the official timeline expectations had already been released.

Odaily Planet Daily believes this further indicates that Smart Cashtags is not an isolated product attempt but X is laying the groundwork for the interface of "content × finance."

When placed alongside adjustments like creator incentive rules and the withdrawal of InfoFi APIs, its positioning becomes clearer: X is not in a hurry to personally intervene in trading execution but is attempting to compress assets, prices, and market sentiment into a single clickable, traceable content node.

In this structure, the value of content is no longer simply determined by interaction volume but depends on whether it can form a continuous, consumable stream of information and narrative around a specific asset. In this sense, Smart Cashtags is not a tool prepared for "mouth farming," but rather reserves an entry for those specific content forms.

After the algorithm is "uncovered," exposure rights have not become more democratic

Beyond Smart Cashtags, another change frequently mentioned by X recently is the formal open-sourcing of the recommendation algorithm.

In late January, the X engineering team announced that the latest version of the platform's algorithm has been made public, adopting the same Transformer architecture as the Grok model under xAI. Subsequently, Elon Musk bluntly stated that the algorithm is still "quite clumsy," but open-sourcing means users can clearly see its optimization path. For a long time, content being throttled and topics being suppressed were often attributed to "black box algorithms"; algorithm transparency at least means that the rules are no longer hidden, and the paths are traceable.

The latest publicly available platform algorithm Github repository homepage

However, open-sourcing the algorithm does not mean that exposure rights are evenly distributed.

Almost simultaneously, X is advancing a systematic upgrade of the "interest discovery" mechanism. The core goal is to help new accounts find content of interest more quickly, without the lengthy process of following and filtering. When organizing the timeline, the algorithm shifts from relying on "who you follow" to "what the system thinks you might want to see."

Under this framework, whether content gains exposure depends on two key criteria: understandability and consumability.

• Understandability: Content has a clear structure, complete information, and is easy for the algorithm to recognize and categorize.
• Consumability: Content can be absorbed, understood, and interacted with by users in a short time, forming an effective information flow.

In other words, exposure rights are no longer determined by "interaction volume," but by whether the content can be efficiently recognized, distributed, and attract an audience by the system. This marks a shift from the previous model of "who is more active is more prominent" to a distribution logic centered on the intrinsic value of content.

As the platform simultaneously tightens interaction incentives, structures asset narratives, and strengthens interest recommendation mechanisms, a new filtering logic has taken shape. Under such a system, "mouth farming" being naturally excluded from mainstream exposure paths is no longer surprising.

Conclusion: This is not a crackdown on mouth farming, but a repricing of content value

From tightening creator incentive rules, open-sourcing algorithms, to gradually advancing Smart Cashtags functionality, and the Meme section being singled out on January 22, X is gradually piecing together a clear path.

Low-value interactions are stripped away, assets and emotions are restructured, and algorithms and interest discovery mechanisms are pushed to the forefront—these adjustments collectively point to a core result: the platform is redefining what kind of content is worth distributing, valuing, and seeing.

In the new order, Memes are classified as emotional expressions, while financial and crypto content are required to have clear structure and direction; exposure rights shift from "who is more active" to "who is easier to understand and consume." The platform is no longer paying for noise or mere participation.

The end of the mouth farming era is not the endpoint but the first perceptible signal of X's content value system reconstruction. As the new rules take effect, the platform is building a value system that leans more towards the content itself rather than interaction behavior.

For creators and the industry, this means that gaining visibility on X in the future will no longer rely on quantity but on whether the content can be recognized by algorithms, absorbed by the audience, and form sustainable value. This new order is both a reclamation of platform sovereignty and a profound reshaping of the content ecosystem.