Social media network Twitter has already been under criticism for bot and spam accounts. The problem had become so acute that it needed CEO Jack Dorsey to intervene. However, in a series of tweets, Vitalik Buterin and Elon Musk have asked Jack Dorsey to end this nuisance. It has been observed that spam accounts are impersonating technology personalities and announcing fake cryptocurrency giveaways.
Elon “Not giving away ETH” Musk
Over the past week, Elon Musk has been actively trying to help rescue stranded Thai footballers. He used Twitter as a medium to convey his ideas and thoughts on how his team could help rescue the kids. But on July 09, 2018, a user @liangweihan4 tweeted Musk, asking him for Bitcoin donations. This is not the first time that spam accounts have targeted Elon.
I want to know who is running the Etherium scambots! Mad skillz …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2018
Elon Musk tweeted a reply and said he was inquisitive to know who was running these scam accounts. During March 2018, fake Elon Musk accounts began replying to SpaceX and Tesla tweets with fake cryptocurrency giveaways. The link would redirect to a webpage and ask users to send small amounts of ETH.
Vitalik Buterin and Changpeng Zhao ask Jack Dorsey for help
Vitalik Buterin also retweeted Elon Musk’s tweet and opined that Twitter needed to do more to weed out spam accounts. Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has been forced to change his name on Twitter to ‘Vitalik “Not giving away ETH” Buterin’. He was a target of spam accounts who would impersonate him and announce fake cryptocurrency giveaways. Not only Vitalik but also several other cryptocurrency developers have been forced to insert “Not giving away ETH” in their names on the social media network.
I do wish @elonmusk's first tweet about ethereum was about the tech rather than the twitter scambots……..@jack help us please? Or someone from the ETH community make a layer 2 scam filtering solution, please? https://t.co/biVRshZmne
— Vitalik "Not giving away ETH" Buterin (@VitalikButerin) July 9, 2018
Binance cofounder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao also tweeted to Jack Dorsey on July 09, 2018, asking him to take efforts and put an end to spam accounts. The tweet has since been deleted.
Over the last year, Twitter has taken drastic steps and shut down suspect accounts but it surely needs to do more.