⏱ 3 min read
UK filing alleges a coordinated network faked engagement to unlock Creator Revenue Sharing. X has shut the program and launched “Original Content Rewards” that excludes artificial engagement.
X has sued two men it says orchestrated a coordinated bot network to siphon money from its Creator Revenue Sharing program, according to a United Kingdom High Court complaint filed September 17. The filing names Vivek Kumar Sen, Zamyang Sherpa, and others, alleging the network farmed engagement on Bitcoin-related content to unlock and collect payouts.
According to the complaint and a confirmation post by James Burnham, general counsel for X and xAI, six primary accounts—plus at least three booster accounts—posted near-identical content seconds apart and systematically liked each other’s posts. Examples cited include two accounts that on October 10, 2025 posted the same line (“Like, if you are not selling #Bitcoin”) with the same chart minutes apart, and instances of copied replies. X says payout Stripe profiles carried mismatched names compared with the operators it traced, and cites messages in which Sen allegedly sought to recruit other high-follower accounts.
The platform suspended nine linked accounts on August 18. X alleges the group extracted at least £207,384 ($278,000) from Creator Revenue Sharing and says it spent at least £75,000 investigating. The suit brings claims of deceit, unjust enrichment, and unlawful means conspiracy, and asserts a constructive trust over funds. X seeks repayment, damages, interest, and legal costs. As of September 21, no defense had been filed; the case is proceeding under claim number BL-2026-001161.
The mechanism
Creator Revenue Sharing paid a cut of ad revenue based on engagement (likes, replies, reposts). To qualify, an account needed X Premium, five million impressions over three months, and 500 verified followers. The complaint describes a straightforward arbitrage: coordinate accounts to cross-post and self-amplify, inflate engagement to meet thresholds, and route payouts through Stripe accounts that don’t clearly match the operators.
X shut down Creator Revenue Sharing on September 7 and replaced it with Original Content Rewards, which the company says excludes “artificially generated” engagement from payouts. If the new filter works reliably, it reduces the expected return to coordination schemes and bot farming, particularly in high-velocity niches like crypto where templated content travels quickly.
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Why it matters
For crypto-native creators and advertisers, the shift targets the economic root of engagement farming rather than just the actors. If payouts depend less on raw interactions and more on originality, the incentive to mass-repost charts and memes declines. That could improve signal quality in Bitcoin discourse on X—but only if artificial engagement is effectively screened and enforcement scales beyond a single suit.
Limitations
These are allegations, not findings; the defendants have not responded in court. The filing does not quantify the broader scope of abuse across the program, nor does it detail the technical accuracy or false-positive rate of the new originality filter.
What to watch next
- Court docket for BL-2026-001161: any defense, discovery, or settlement moves.
- Operational detail and results from Original Content Rewards—how X defines and detects “artificially generated” engagement and any reported clawbacks.
- Additional enforcement actions that indicate whether more networks used similar playbooks.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
🧠 HafidWatch Take
X’s engagement-arbitrage design, centered on raw interaction payouts, enabled bot networks to exploit the system through synchronized posting and recycled replies. The end of Creator Revenue Sharing and introduction of “Original Content Rewards” represent a shift toward prioritizing originality to reduce such gaming. The key challenge remains whether X can effectively filter out synthetic engagement and recover funds at scale. Although the current £207k case is limited, ongoing discovery may reveal broader patterns and additional actors. Future developments to monitor include new lawsuits, data from the updated payout model, and changes in crypto-topic engagement as incentives for farming diminish.
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