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To improve user experience, Elon Musk-owned social network X (formerly known as Twitter) removed approximately 1.7 million bot accounts. These profiles were overwhelming reply posts with spam and useless content.
The large-scale purge, announced earlier this week, is a continuation of efforts by the company to rebuild authenticity and substantial engagement on the platform.
The cleanup follows a growing number of complaints from users who claimed their responses were being hijacked by AI spam and irrelevant chatter. The bots not only messed up conversations but also made it hard for real users to engage meaningfully.
X Head of Product Nikita Bier confirmed the update in a post on the platform, “This week we removed 1.7 million bots that were participating in reply spam. You should begin to notice improvements over the next few days,” Bier wrote.
Bier said that the effort is directed at solving one of X’s most enduring issues. The pervasive infestation of bot networks that undermines trust and participation on the platform is expected to be terminated soon.
Having cleaned up the reply areas, X is now focusing on spam in direct messages (DMs). The next stage of the anti-spam agenda is slated to target automated accounts that spam inboxes. This includes bots that produce unwanted messages, phishing links, and bogus offers.
The organization has also indicated that it will be introducing AI-powered moderation tools and new link-sharing functionalities intended to identify and prevent spam more efficiently. These initiatives are anticipated to reinforce existing safety measures and minimize the dissemination of malicious content.
With more than 1.7 million fake accounts deleted, users can expect clearer responses and more genuine interactions. The clean-up also marks Musk’s rededication to making X a more secure and reliable platform.
For everyday users, the instant difference might be a reduced number of spam responses to top posts. This is an issue that went out of control in conversations about cryptocurrency and trending news.
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This scrubbing is one of the biggest anti-spam initiatives in X’s history and is an important step towards Musk’s initiative to restore user trust. Since taking over Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk has promised time and again to make Twitter a free-speech haven without undermining user safety.
By acting on spam at scale, initially in replies and now in DMs, X is trying to find that equilibrium. The next few weeks will determine if the purge does its job in restoring credibility to the platform and enhancing the day-to-day user experience.
