Ángel Jiménez from Luis USA

USA

Updated Friday, April 5, 2024-20:13

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Some users of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, are in for an unpleasant surprise. From one of the company's official accounts they warn that

the number of followers they see on their profiles could drop significantly in the coming days

.

The reason? It seems that

Musk has had enough of the number of automated spam accounts on the platform

, a problem that he promised to solve by taking control of Twitter in 2022 but that has gotten worse. Although Musk has implemented various strategies in the last year to try to counteract their presence, the responses to the most popular users' posts are usually full of them.

Advances

in the last year in generative artificial intelligence tools have made this task even more complicated

, as it is now easier to create automated accounts that post consistent messages and responses and pose as legitimate users.

Musk's initial plan was

to encourage subscriptions to X Premium

, the service that for a variable price per month gives access to more advanced functions within the platform, such as the ability to see fewer advertising, publish longer messages.

But low adoption of the service, and the fact that some automated accounts pay for the service to give greater visibility to their messages, has thwarted these plans.

Now,

Musk

has promised a general deletion of these automated accounts. "We are purging the system of bots and trolls. Please write to me or @XEng if we have suspended a legitimate account. X Corp will track down the people responsible and bring the full force of the law to bear on them," Musk said.

The decision comes a day after Musk boasted of having achieved a

"traffic record"

on X, although without giving details of how he measures that traffic. Since the purchase of the social network, the criteria for measuring the platform's audience have changed and since X is no longer a listed company, it does not have to publish audience data quarterly.

The figure is still important, however, to attract advertisers, who in the last year

have abandoned

the platform en masse due to some of Musk's controversial statements.

This week, in an attempt to improve relations with advertisers,

Musk has reinforced the internal security team

, which is responsible, among other things, for ensuring that ads do not end up being displayed next to content that may be controversial.

The social network has also begun granting the benefits of subscription accounts, including the verification mark, for free to users with proven influence within the network, a 180-degree turn in its strategy, which considered the system of verification a vague system that had created a system of "nobles and commoners" on Twitter.