Cryptocurrency communities on X have seen a surge in flagged accounts recently. Luckily, the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, acknowledges and attributes it to an error by an anti-spam bot.
The issue came to light as a flurry of legitimate crypto accounts, typically bustling with activity due to the high engagement nature of the community, were mistakenly marked as spam. These accounts often share a large volume of replies, answers and frequently use hash and cashtags — a behavior that unfortunately mirrors that of spambots, thus triggering the platform’s automated anti-spam measures.
An 𝕏 spam/scam bot accidentally flagged many legitimate accounts today. This is being fixed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2024
This misidentification has broader implications for the crypto community on Twitter. Major accounts, especially those associated with large and active communities like Shiba Inu and Floki, have seen a decline in followers, as the platform’s algorithms struggle to differentiate between genuine engagement and bot-like activity. Many of these communities have a significant presence of bots, which further complicates the platform’s ability to accurately flag only the inauthentic accounts.
Despite these challenges, Twitter remains the preeminent social media platform for cryptocurrency dialogue and dissemination, outpacing other platforms such as Reddit and TikTok by a considerable margin. Its real-time nature and global reach make it a hotspot for announcements, discussions and the exchange of ideas within the crypto world.
However, since Elon Musk’s takeover, Twitter has experienced some user attrition, with certain segments of the user base moving to alternative platforms.
As the platform works to rectify the mistakes caused by the overzealous anti-spam bot, the incident shows how troublesome the battle with bots and spam accounts is. Accounts dedicated to finance and cryptocurrencies might tone down the aggressiveness of their posting strategies in order to avoid any issues in the future.