Meta has ended its bonus program on Threads
Meta is no longer paying creators to post on Threads. The company quietly ended the Threads bonus program, which offered some creators thousands of dollars a month in bonuses, earlier this year, Engadget has confirmed.
The company hasn't officially commented on why it stopped the payments, but an Instagram support page that once listed details about the creator incentives no longer references Threads at all. In posts on Threads, creators who were once part of the program have said they stopped receiving payments around the end of April. That's roughly one year after Meta first started paying creators for popular posts. Though Meta never publicly shared a lot of details about how the program worked, creators who previously spoke with Engadget reported that they were able to earn monthly bonuses ranging from $500 to $5,000 in exchange for hitting specific metrics around post counts and views.
It's not clear what Meta's strategy for creators on Threads is going forward. The company is still trying to lure more brands and notable faces to the platform, and has tested features to help people find popular creators they previously followed on X. Meta has also added creator-friendly tools, like the ability to add more links to profiles and more detailed analytics for the app.
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But Meta has yet to clearly explain what it can offer creators in return. The platform is hardly driving any traffic to outside websites. It's also much harder to build a following on Threads, since the platform defaults to an algorithmic timeline consisting mainly of recommended content. This means that it's easier for a post from an unknown account to go viral, but viral posts rarely lead to an influx of new followers.
Meta may simply be calculating that Threads already has enough momentum without paying people for viral content. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said he believes the app can be Meta's next billion-user platform. It's difficult to see how that happens without the buy-in of creators.
Have a tip for Karissa? You can reach her by email, on X, Bluesky, Threads, or send a message to @karissabe.51 to chat confidentially on Signal.
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Time Magazine
28 minutes ago
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Since the re-election of President Donald Trump, many prominent American corporations, including Amazon, Meta, and Target, have abandoned their diversity efforts just a few years after launching them in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests. As The Washington Post reported, a study of 500 large companies revealed that last year saw the fewest DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) references in corporate financial statements since 2020. But other organizations, such as Apple, Costco, and Delta Air Lines, have committed to maintaining DEI programs—despite the possibility of government investigations and consumer boycotts. These values-based organizations are part of a long—albeit often controversial—history in the U.S. of businesses expressing social beliefs in the marketplace. Traditionally, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these social beliefs primarily stemmed from religious beliefs. As the 20th century progressed, however, a greater array of social beliefs began to animate business practices for many companies. This history reveals that, for good or ill, businesses 'infused with religion' and social beliefs have shaped the American marketplace profoundly. This tradition can be traced back to entrepreneurs such as James, John, Wesley, and Fletcher Harper. Beginning in 1810, the brothers moved to New York City to work as apprentices in one of the many printing shops popping up in the city's downtown. They joined a growing downtown Methodist congregation, John Street Church, and within a few years, they had saved up enough to strike out on their own. Read More:The Major U.S. Companies Scaling Back DEI Efforts as Trump Targets Initiatives Initially, the brothers mostly published books for the Methodist community, but soon they were printing and publishing for the general public. 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Closing their operations on Sundays, editing 'problematic' passages of text to be more 'Christian,' and committing to only publishing books that would foster 'virtue' in America's families and contribute to the common good—these were natural extensions of the brothers' religion. As their business grew, so did the brothers' influence as they decided whose work would be published, and what types of literature to privilege. The New Yorker explained this profound influence in 1838, stating, 'The Harpers have probably done more for the advancement of literary taste and the advantage of native authorship than all the other publishers.' It was a heady rise for four journeyman apprentices, proud that their virtuous vision had penetrated American culture so profoundly. The Harpers' story illustrates how those attacking forms of values-based capitalism in the 21st century—whether from the left or the right—are pushing against a longstanding reality of the American marketplace. 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