Elon Musk’s ‘solution’ to the bot problem on X is limiting replies

X Twitter

Even before he spent billions of dollars acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk had a huge problem with bots on the social media platform. In 2022, when he bought Twitter, he said that bots remain the biggest challenge. We are in 2024, Twitter is not called Twitter but the bots still remain. In another attempt to limit the bots on social media platforms, Musk has revealed that X will give users the option to limit replies to verified users only.

In a reply to a post — which shared a ‘hack’ on allowing verified users to reply — Musk said that “This will improve the quality of your replies”. Notably, the feature hasn’t been announced by X nor has Musk made any other comment on it. It’s a feature — that needs to be turned on — which can be used on X to limit replies from only verified people. Before posting on X, you will see an option “Everyone can reply”. This can be changed to only verified accounts thus limiting spam bots to comment or reply on posts on X.

One of Musk's biggest concerns has the sheer number of bots. He's accused past management of downplaying the issue, claiming less than 5% of users were bots, a figure he believes is much higher. This alleged inflation of user numbers could impact advertising revenue and future investments, he had argued.

Since taking over the social media platform, Musk has proposed and undertaken several measures. There was a "bot purge" that removed millions of accounts, leading to some celebrities losing followers. He also suggested that new users should pay an annual fee to post and reply on posts on X. And now this: use a feature that allows users to not let others reply on their posts — unless they have a verified account badge.

Also read: Elon Musk wants to use Grok AI to change the way people get their news with Stories