Popular social networking platform Twitter has finally increased its efforts against cryptocurrency scammers. The company reported its set of numbers for Q2 2018 on July 27, 2018. It said that profits had risen to over $100 million on a quarterly basis but number of Twitter accounts had fallen by 1 million. This fall in number of accounts comes after CEO Jack Dorsey had repeatedly stated that the company would take concrete steps in banning bot accounts and also crackdown on accounts impersonating high profile personalities.
Twitter Begins Suspending Accounts
SpaceX and Tesla co founder Elon Musk along with Ethereum co founder Vitalik Buterin and other notable cryptocurrency personalities were a prime target of impersonators running fake giveaways. The nuisance grew to such an extent that both Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin had to step in and ask Twitter to intervene. Taking a stringent stance on this issue, Twitter has now begun suspending unverified accounts under the name of Elon Musk. Any unverified account changing its name to Elon Musk will be suspended and the user will have to complete a phone number verification and also complete a captcha to regain access to the account.
Past instances of impersonators targeting Elon Musk and Vitalik Buterin
In March 2018, Twitter told The Verge that they are aware of these deceptions and are implementing various tactics to prevent such scams. As previously reported by CryptStorm News on July 09, 2018, Elon Musk was targeted by fake bot accounts asking for cryptocurrency donations while Vitalik Buterin was also facing similar issues. The nuisance of fake giveaway accounts had grown so much that Vitalik Buterin changes his name on Twitter from ‘Vitalik Buterin’ to ‘Vitalik “Not giving away ETH” Buterin.’
Just a few weeks later, an article surfaced where the reporter himself failed to identify a tweet between Elon Musk and his impersonator. Talking about the rescue efforts tried by the Tesla and SpaceX cofounder, the journalist referred to a tweet sent from a fake Elon Musk account which was asking for cryptocurrency transfer.
Effect of Suspending Bot and Fake Accounts
Twitter has intensified its campaign against trolls and bots by suspending more than a million fake accounts in a day. More than seventy million accounts were suspended in May and June alone. This comes after the accused Russian interference in the United States presidential election in 2016 of using fake twitter accounts to create a conducive online support for Donald Trump. Twitter is now actively targeting malicious behavior in order to reduce the amount of misinformation and fraud on the platform.
A major drop in the number of followers of notable personalities was observed as soon as Twitter began a more stringent crackdown on fake profiles across its platform in July 2018. Heads of state and football clubs began witnessing a drop in followers. The drop in number of followers was anywhere between 100,000 to over 300,000 for some accounts.
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