Musk announces crackdown on engagement farming spam on X

ISLAMABAD: Elon Musk, CEO of social networking website X — formally Twitter has declared a new policy about engagement farming and warned that any accounts involved in it will be suspended and traced to their source.

The initiative is aimed to improve the authenticity and quality of interactions on the social networking platform.

This initiative aims to promote authenticity on the platform and has sparked discussions about its implications on free speech. The platform will use Grok to detect, remove, and trace engagement farming spam. The announcement has elicited mixed reactions, with some users concerned about free speech, while others believe it will encourage more thoughtful posting. In a recent post, Musk wrote, “Any accounts doing engagement farming will be suspended and traced to source.” Musk’s post generated immense response as within the first eleven hours it reached more than 57 million users on X. More than 33 thousand people have replied to this post and many users have lauded Musk’s latest announcement.

One X user named Marc replied to Musk and wrote, “If this means suspending accounts that consistently reply to large accounts spamming unrelated content. That would be amazing! I miss when replies were in response to the original post.”

Musk’s post also generated a lot of questions among many users about engagement farming and asked what engagement farming is?

The definition of engagement farming as per Grok is, “It is a cunning strategy employed by some individuals in the digital realm to artificially inflate their online presence and popularity. They do this by posting content specifically designed to provoke strong reaction, be it positive or negative from their audience. This can include making provocative statements, sharing controversial opinions or even posting content with a high potential for emotional triggers. The goal is to generate as much engagement as possible in the form of likes, comments, shares, or retweets, to increase their visibility and reach on social media platforms. It’s like being a digital puppeteer, pulling the strings of online discourse to their advantage. So the next time you see a post that seems designed to make your blood boil, remember, it might just be a clever ploy by an engagement farmer.”

In simple terms, engagement farming is when one wants to get more engagement on social media platforms. This method is used extensively by the users to grow their personal account or brand.

According to various social media experts, engagement farming is a common practice used by the influencers. They join various groups, engage with each other’s content in a reciprocal arrangement. Whenever one member of the group publishes a post, they share it via messaging services like WhatsApp, Instagram etc. The other members like and comment or repost those posts. This generates engagement and promotes those posts published by the influencers or anyone involved in engagement farming. Through this trick they also cheat the social networking algorithm.

According to social media experts after Musk’s announcement it is expected that the algorithm will identify the patterns used in engagement farming and penalise the creator of those posts or accounts.