X is trying to get users to make videos inside its app after one of its own executives said too much of the platform’s video traffic comes from accounts recycling other people’s work.
Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, said in a Monday post that many videos posted by major accounts are taken from other users, including clips that first went viral years earlier. Bier also said video now accounts for nearly half of impressions on X. That is the awkward part: X wants video growth, but its incentives have apparently made old-fashioned content scraping a profitable hobby.
Alongside that admission, Bier announced a built-in video editor and recorder for X. TechCrunch reported that the tools are available now in the iOS version of the app.
According to Bier, the point is to reduce what he called recycled content and give creators a reason to post material that does not already exist elsewhere. That is a product fix aimed at a policy problem: if reposting stolen clips earns attention and revenue, a nicer editor will only help if X also changes what gets rewarded.
What the new tools do
The iOS tools include a recorder and editing features meant to let users assemble clips without leaving X. TechCrunch reported that the editor includes multilingual caption overlays and a green screen feature that can place a user in front of custom backgrounds made from posts or photos in the camera roll.
Bier’s announcement video also showed trimming controls and automatic caption generation. The green screen format is familiar from TikTok and Instagram, where creators routinely react to or build on other posts with themselves layered over the source material.
X has not framed this as a full TikTok clone, but the mechanics are plainly from the same short-form video toolbox: record, cut, caption, remix, post. The company’s pitch is that keeping those steps inside X will make original posting easier than downloading, editing, and reuploading someone else’s clip. That is the charitable read.
X has been tightening payments for repost accounts
The new editor follows several product and payout changes Bier has described this year. In May, Bier said his team had found large accounts that were programmatically reuploading other users’ content to manipulate X’s revenue share program. He said X would assign impressions from those reposts to the original creator instead.
In April, Bier said X was reducing payouts to aggregators that shared stolen reposts and clickbait. With the video tool announcement, he added that creators who avoid recycled content will rise faster than other accounts.
That last claim leaves plenty unsaid. X has not, in the material described by Bier, laid out the ranking signals, enforcement thresholds, or how it determines original ownership when the same clip appears across platforms. Those details matter, because automated reposting is easy and attribution on social video is usually a trash fire with a thumbnail.
For creators, the practical change is narrow for now: iPhone users get a native video editor, and X says originality will be rewarded more than recycled clips. Whether that changes the feed depends on whether X’s ranking and revenue systems punish theft more consistently than they have so far.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
