Elon Musk’s X has removed 42,000 chatbot accounts in an AI spam crackdown aimed at eliminating automated replies and fake engagement on social media platforms.
Nikita Beer, head of product at X, announced this major step as the company’s main objective is to enhance human interaction rather than programmatic AI engagement.
“X’s core value is to provide an authentic pulse of humanity, and using AI to programmatically engage with users without human involvement goes against our mission,” he wrote about X.
While users praised this important move, they suggested crowdsourcing as a potential way to issue warnings more quickly. Some called for other social media platforms to take similar steps to combat automated engagement.
One user wrote: “Great. But I’m still seeing a ton of auto-replies, so it feels like there are millions more left. Is there a way to flag them faster? I feel like crowdsourcing could help.”
“Nikita, can you please make Community Notes more than just Community Notes? By the time Community Notes arrive, the damage has already been done. You should start suspending and banning accounts for too many Community Notes. This is the best way for people to learn the lies and stop lying 24/7,” one person commented.
Some users said, “Many of us come to X for real-time conversations and posts to avoid being exposed to endless short videos every time we open the app,” and suggested fixing TikTok-style video reels on X.
“Thank you, this is great. And perhaps most importantly to keep fighting, it annoys me to no end to receive replies like that, even from accounts that only occasionally use that kind of automation,” a third user welcomed the move.
