X has announced a new crackdown on bots and spam, including improved detection of artificial intelligence-powered bot profiles and scraping activity, as it continues to battle fake engagement in the app.
Though that may well be a losing battle in the AI era, with AI tools now enabling the creation of more sophisticated, more life-like bots, which are increasingly harder to detect. But X believes that it has the capacity to combat this element, with new processes that can weed out automated activity better than ever.
As explained by X’s Head of Product Nikita Bier: “If a human is not tapping on the screen, the account and all associated accounts will likely be suspended – even if you’re just experimenting.”
Bier has been looking to combat crypto scam bots in particular of late, and the use of X by crypto projects, which can include disingenuous engagement. Some crypto projects incentivize supporters to post on X to boost their promotions, but that kind of activity can also pollute X with spam-like behavior.
Bier has been looking to stamp this out, and he’s hoping that these improved detection measures will be another step in the company’s broader push to eliminate bots. Or die trying, as X owner Elon Musk once said.
Bots were a key focus of Musk’s early, pre-purchase notes on Twitter, with Musk vowing to rid the platform of all bots, which he claimed had become a major problem.
How big of a problem? Well, according to Musk, bot activity on Twitter had exceeded 20% of all activity in the app before he took over, which Musk had actually tried to use as a lever to get out of his $44 billion acquisition of the app. That didn’t work, and Musk was eventually forced to pay up, but he then vowed to make this a focus, and get rid of all bots on X.
Which he actually did claim that he had done, yet, despite this, X’s user count actually went up after Musk’s takeover, not down, which is what would have had to happen if X were to eliminate 20% of its users, as Musk had claimed.
Musk has also floated plans to charge all users as a means to further disincentivize bot peddlers, but he’s hesitated in taking the next step on this.
At the same time, there have also been reports that bot activity has significantly increased during Musk’s tenure as X chief, so while Musk had once sought to make bots a focus, that seemingly hasn’t played out as he had hoped.
But maybe this new push will be more effective, and will see X make significant strides in combating AI-powered bot profiles in particular. Bier seems confident in the approach, and its impact on non-genuine use cases, though he has also noted the potential impacts on AI agents:
“While we aim to support legitimate use-cases of agents, this will take some time to do properly. For now, we recommend holding off on plugging in your bots. If it’s critical, you can use the official API.”
So there will be expanded use cases for bots, but right now, X is focused on weeding out the spam and scam bots once again.
Will that impact X’s overall usage count? Will it impact X usage? And also, given that X data is used to power Grok, and xAI’s other projects, will this push help to clean-up X’s data stream, and improve Grok’s answers?
We’ll find out as X undertakes its latest bot clean out.
