One of Elon Musk’s major gambits when he bought Twitter in 2022 and rebranded it as X was to transform the platform into, essentially, a more open “everything” app — less gatekeeping, less curated, more viral. But by loosening controls and monetising influence, X had unwittingly created an ecosystem that prized quantity over quality. And in that system, fake accounts were not only surviving — they were thriving.
The evidence is increasingly evident. It turns out there is something off about dozens of accounts purporting to be based in the US, deeply engaged in local politics or culture: On closer inspection, their posts and profile pictures tend to have been lifted from DC think tanks, Middle Eastern gay nightclubs, or far-right pool parties, with location tags in Mumbai, Bangkok, and Eastern Europe. This isn’t just mislabeled location data — it’s evidence that the US is a site of intense, invasive profiling, and that the data we assume has nothing to do with us is actually building complex, detailed pictures of our lives.
But how did we get here? At the heart of the problem is a business model: X pays for engagement, views, alerts, and reactions. Under Musk’s vision, every viral post, every share of that post, and every comment on a thread becomes monetisable. In that universe, the incentives changed: the more posts deliver outrage, spam, or straight-up misinformation, the more value one gets. Facebook was fertile ground for troll farms, automated bots, and networks of people impersonating others. Or as a Business Insider headline expressed it, “X’s fake accounts are exactly what Elon Musk paid for.”
Granted, fake accounts are more than harmless spam. They shape perception, polarise debate, game the algorithm, and pressure the platform’s moderation systems. One analysis found that verified accounts on X spread 74% of the platform’s most viral false claims about one major conflict. This isn’t fringe—it’s systemic.
X’s own actions create the appearance of endorsement. The closer the platform tilts toward virality, the less value is placed on authenticity. The blue-check system, once merely a symbol of verification, became a subscription badge anyone could purchase — and invited impersonation that eroded trust. The European Union has identified X as a likely seller of rule-violating items and services under the Digital Services Act because, among other reasons, its checkmark system “negatively impacts users’ ability to make free and informed decisions.”
So what does this mean for users, corporations, and even democracy? First: trust in platform content is shattered when you discover that “American voice” can actually be read as “outsourced troll” or “bot cluster”. Second: brands paying to advertise via X run the risk of reaching fake accounts or being manipulated into serving as an intermediary for a manipulative network that paid (and maybe got gibberish). Third: if false activity corrupts the numbers, then X’s whole analytics stack is on shaky ground. Engagement is no longer a sign of genuine human interest, but instead of algorithmically optimised noise.
Musk’s recent effort to charge new users $1 in some countries to “reduce bot activity” highlights how belated the wake-up call was. The idea is: if you make posting cost something — even a few pennies — you drive away bots. But critics say it’s not nearly enough, and perhaps even more likely to remove real new users than accounts filled with spam.
S: O yes, if you’re skimming X and being served hot takes, viral posts, or “grass-roots movements,” understand they might all be manifestations derived from networks made for monetisation and not human utterance. Musk shut off the gatekeepers, but he kept the paywalls of engagement. In the process, he helped make fake accounts not mere byproducts — but features of business as usual.
It’s possible that the platform still facilitates genuine voices, but with a system that inherently incentivizes fakes. If you are taking X as a signal of public opinion, what you may be seeing is performance art, not genuine feelings. And in one sense, Musk got what he paid for.
