X adds Paid Partnership labels so creators can ditch the hashtags | TechCrunch

Social network X on Monday announced the introduction of a new “Paid Partnership” label that creators can apply to their posts to indicate they’re advertisements. The feature could help improve creators’ authenticity, so fans know when a product recommendation is an original sentiment, versus a paid sponsorship, while also complying with regulations that say ads on social media need labels.

Similar tags have existed for years on other platforms, like Instagram, after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned influencers back in 2017 that they needed to “clearly and conspicuously disclose”when a post was sponsored by an advertiser, or if that company otherwise supports them. Last year, Instagram expanded on its Partnership Ads to allow creators to also get paid for written testimonials shared as comments on a brand’s social media posts.

Creators on X, however, haven’t had a built-in way to label posts, leaving them to use hashtags like #paidpartnership and #ad to label their posts.

With the new feature, creators will be able to toggle on a new “content disclose” setting on a post to apply the Paid Partnership label that will then appear directly below the post’s content. This label can also be applied after the fact, in case the creator forgot to use the option when originally posting. According to X’s head of product, Nikitia Bier, the feature lets creators be transparent with their followers, while also complying with federal regulations.

“While we want to encourage people to build their businesses on X, undisclosed promotions hurt the integrity of the product and lead people to distrust the content they read on X,” he wrote in a post on X announcing the new feature.

X has tried to appeal to the creator class for some time, offering payouts for viral content, ad-revenue sharing, creator subscriptions, and more. But as a platform best known as a place to discuss real-time news and events, the company has struggled to attract creators who still often prefer to reach their audiences through Instagram, YouTube, and elsewhere.

With the addition of Paid Partnership labels, the company is at least making it easier for creators to play by the rules without having to ruin their posts with hashtags, which have become somewhat passé. (When Instagram launched its X competitor Threads, it did away with the hash symbol entirely, in fact.)

X has made other changes that focus on the authenticity of content on its platform. Last week, it announced that its API could no longer be used for programmatic replies unless the original author had @mentioned the replying user or the author had quoted them. This is meant to reduce the impact of LLM-generated spam activity on X. These types of AI-generated replies could also be used by shady brands to reply to ads and creators’ sponsored content as if they were other, legitimate customers who enjoyed the product in question.