X's Paid Partnerships Policy requires sponsored posts to have the "Paid Partnership" disclosure switched on in Content Disclosure settings when you compose the post — a separate requirement from writing "partner" or the brand's name in the caption. In September 2026, LeBron James, who signed a reported $15 million-a-year individual partnership with Polymarket, posted NFL Week 2 prediction content captioned "Polymarket Partner" without turning on that official label, and a Community Note was appended pointing out that X's policy requires the native label, not caption text. Here's what to update in your contract and campaign checklist before your next X post.
What exactly does X's "Paid Partnership" disclosure require?
X's own help documentation (Paid Partnerships Policy, help.x.com) defines a Paid Partnership as a post promoting a product or service in exchange for compensation or incentive from a third-party brand, and states that any Paid Partnership published as an organic post must have the "Paid Partnership" disclosure switched on. That disclosure lives in the composer's Content Disclosure settings — a flag icon you toggle on while writing the post, marking it as made on behalf of a third party, which causes X to automatically attach a visible "Paid Partnership" label. It can also be added after the fact, via a post's "···" menu → "Add content disclosure." The feature has been live since roughly March 2026, per trade coverage from Social Media Today, mlq.ai, and others.
Is writing "partner" in the caption enough?
No — and the gap has already played out publicly. LeBron James signed an individual partnership with Polymarket in September 2026, reportedly worth $15 million a year (Front Office Sports, CBS Sports, Covers). During NFL Week 2, he posted prediction-market picks on X captioned "Polymarket Partner" without activating X's official Paid Partnership toggle. A Community Note was appended noting that X's policy requires the official label, not caption text. More notable: an earlier September 8 post used the same caption-only pattern — "In partnership with Polymarket," tucked in after jokes and emoji — and that habit repeated even after legal commentary had already flagged it (see the next section).
Why is this a risk for the brand and agency, not just the creator?
Law firm KJK's September 11, 2026 analysis, "When 'In Partnership With' Isn't Enough: Creator and Brand Obligations," used that September 8 post as its example to make the point that a single sponsored post has to satisfy two separate rule sets at once: the platform decides what has to be clicked or toggled (X's own disclosure mechanism), and the FTC decides what the audience has to understand (the Endorsement Guides' "clear and conspicuous" standard) — and the creator and the brand can both be held to both. Caption text may or may not clear the FTC's bar depending on placement and visibility — buried after jokes and emoji is close to the opposite of "clear and conspicuous" — but it never satisfies X's own toggle requirement, full stop. That's an obligation specific to the platform that your contract needs to spell out directly; a generic "disclose per FTC guidelines" clause doesn't cover it.
What should you check before your next X post?
- Name the platform and the mechanism in the contract itself — "activate X's native Paid Partnership toggle in Content Disclosure settings for any post on X" — instead of a generic "comply with FTC guidelines" clause that tells no one to click an actual button.
- Get a screenshot confirming the toggle was on and the "Paid Partnership" label appeared, before or right after each sponsored post goes live — treat it the same way you'd verify a tracking link.
- Don't count caption text — even text naming the brand — as satisfying X's disclosure requirement. That's a platform-policy violation independent of whether it also clears the FTC's bar.
- Don't leave this as the creator's problem alone. Per KJK's framing, a failure on either the platform rule or the FTC rule can expose the brand and the booking agency too, so verify it yourself rather than assuming the creator handled disclosure.
- Check every post in a campaign, not just the first one. The LeBron/Polymarket pattern repeated on a later post even after the caption-only habit had already drawn public and legal attention.
- Remember the toggle can be added after posting, via the "···" menu → "Add content disclosure." A sponsored post that went live without the label is a same-day fix, not an unrecoverable mistake.
Example (a hypothetical, not a reported figure): a brand running 8 sponsored posts a month on X, where a quarter of them rely on caption-only disclosure instead of the toggle, would have up to 2 posts a month sitting in violation of X's own policy at any given time — worth modeling before you add a toggle check to the contract checklist.
Confirming the label appeared tells you the disclosure box is checked. It doesn't tell you whether that creator is actually driving sales. Want to see, in real numbers, what each creator on your roster is worth? Get started.
