Spam and bots have been bothering all Internet users for years, but recently, this digital plague has increased its activity in the cryptocurrency sector in a big way.
Crypto intelligence provider LunarCrush has revealed that spam in the cryptosphere has increased by a staggering 3,894%. The firm has been collecting crypto-specific social data since 2019 and says that not only is spam at an all-time high, it’s also “the fastest growing metric on social media”.
The findings were published in a report on Thursday, stating that “More spam accounts than you might think are actually people.” For this reason, it is often a challenge for software to detect and flag spam..
Twitter is the social media platform of choice for the cryptocurrency industry, and it is inundated with spam and bots. It is estimated that the volume of spam on Twitter has increased by 1,374% in the last two yearsaccording to LunarCrush.
LunarCrush CEO Joe Vezzani told Quantum Economics founder Matti Greenspan in his cryptocurrency newsletter:
“For a Web2 platform like Twitter, there is a direct incentive to turn a blind eye to fake accounts, because it increases the value of their platform.”
Tokenized Web3 platforms, such as Aave’s Lens Protocol or Orbis, differ in that they want to have as many genuine users as possible in possession of the asset. instead of trying to extract value from the community, he added.
The sensational acquisition of the platform by the billionaire CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, was left in suspense earlier this month awaiting further details support Twitter’s claim that spam and fake accounts account for less than 5% of the platform’s traffic.
Musk plans to crack down on spam bots that have plagued the platform, suggesting the company’s claim that 95% of users are authentic is too lofty.
Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
Twitter claims that over 95% of its daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?
Purging bot accounts would drop the number of followers most genuine accounts have. An estimate from SparkToro suggests Musk could lose half of his 95 million followers. Earlier this month, the software company conducted an in-depth analysis reporting that nearly 20% of all active Twitter accounts are fake or spammers.
Until Musk gets his way and shakes the spammers out of the Twitter tree, users of the platform and other social networks will have to be very attentive to the growing wave of crypto scams and spam in general, which no one seems to have the power to control.
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