X users post graphic or illegal videos in effort to get money from ads and views

Some users who pay for their verified blue-tick status on Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter), are posting graphic videos or illegal content to get views - and cash.

Some users who pay for their verified blue-tick status on Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter), are posting graphic videos or illegal content to get views from other users, which translate to cash.

This subset of users is posting footage of George Floyd’s dying moments, graphic video clips of children suffering because of the Israel-Hamas conflict, a link to a site that claims it uses the latest tech to undress women in photos, and gory videos of people being killed in road accidents.

These posts were mostly shared by entertainment and non-news accounts on X that have paid for verification, or by non-verified accounts seeking more views. The videos have received thousands or millions of such views.

For example, a now-deleted X post published on December 15, promoted a website and claimed it could undress women in photos by using AI software. Clicking the link took the user to a website that played a clip of a woman in nightwear being digitally stripped naked.

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It was not clear whether the website genuinely morphed the photos with AI or used photoshopped presets instead. The post thumbnail showed a purported chat exchange where a user threatened another woman with the nude photos. The post received over 130,000 views on X and stayed up for hours before being deleted.

X enables verified users to “share revenue from verified user’s organic impressions of ads displayed in replies to content you post on X,” according to an official website post. Corporate ads on X were previously found to have been placed near pro-Nazi content, prompting companies such as IBM, Disney, and even the European Union to pause ad spending on the platform.