X tries to attract more publishers and offer $1M for the best January article

Today I read in the news that X is offering a $1 million prize to the author of the most popular long-form X Article published by January 30, 2026, as part of its push to grow long-form content on the platform.

Eligible articles must be original, at least 1,000 words, and winners will be judged mainly on Verified Home Timeline impressions. Only U.S.-based X Premium subscribers can participate.

The incentive is meant to attract creators (and journalists) to publish more in-depth content, which also helps train X’s AI (xAI) with richer data.

• It’s a paradox. Twitter was always a platform for discovering news.

• Then it pushed reporters away by downgrading posts that linked out to news publishers.

• At the same time, Elon promoted “free speech” that, in practice, often suppressed opinions different from his own.

And now this is the “invitation” to bring everyone back.

Do you think the effort to win users back will be successful?

I’m a bit sceptical, both about the quality of the articles and about how the winners will be selected and evaluated.

But who knows, maybe this is your chance.