Nikita Bier, Product Manager at
Nikita Bier spent 24 hours tweeting anti-spam actions in real time, revealing details of how AI-assisted platform spam has become automated and rapid.
42,000 accounts in a single pass
Bier began his series of tweets describing the scale of the chatbot problem, saying that providing authenticity on X is a core value that is at the heart of the company’s core values.
Beer tweeted:
“We found 42,000 accounts automating responses using chatbots and removed them from the platform.
X’s core value is to authentically lift humanity – and using AI to programmatically interact with users without a human involved goes against our mission.
Chatbot spam is motivated by money
Bier followed up the next day by explaining what chatbot spam was. They explained that the spam was not ideologically motivated, that it was not a political operation or a state-led influence operation. It was all about monetization. Apparently, the spammers were trying to expand their audience in order to leverage them for paid promotional offers from AI companies looking to expand their influence.
Companies don’t typically post about their spam problems, and Bier’s real-time post offered a behind-the-scenes look at the scale and motivations.
Bier tweeted:
Maybe you should find another app pic.twitter.com/z9Qv0vbpZj
– Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) July 24, 2026
And I also posted a explanation:
“For the sake of transparency, most of them were sending AI thought leadership spam – to grow their accounts and receive paid endorsement offers from AI technology companies.
99.99% of spam on X is motivated by economic reasons.
Just plain old crooks.
Status updating: a solution in hours, not days
After a day, Bier released a quick update on a timeline of when to see the X feed improve, again showing how these types of anti-spam actions work in real time.
Bier tweeted:
“This spam attack has been mitigated this evening. Your feed will improve in the next 6-12 hours.”
X fights against AI chatbot spammers
Bier’s tweets served as an open statement to spammers to show how serious they are about fighting inauthentic behavior on the platform, calling them criminals.
Beer tweeted:
“We’re going to clean this place up. I don’t care how many enemies I create. X won’t be manipulated by criminals.”
The spammer who pivoted 40 times
The most revealing part of the thread wasn’t a short exchange between Bier and one of the
A response from an X member drew attention to the fact that some of these spammers have started using Grok, X’s own AI product, to generate their responses. Bier confirmed that the Grok-based method had already been detected and blocked. In his response, Bier revealed that X’s response time of 12 to 18 hours was an improvement over the length of time the same problem persisted under the old Twitter.
Bier tweeted:
“There are a few spammers on X who have reoriented their strategy over the last 6 months.
One of them (“This guy is a great trader ⬇️”) pivoted a total of 40 times after each method was blocked.
Some techniques are so creative and quick that it feels like they’re sitting right next to us.
At this point, we might as well hire them because they know the X code base just as well as we do.”
@CryptoParadyme replied:
“please don’t encourage them
many of them have recently used some sort of grok response.
Bier tweeted:
“We blocked Grok’s yesterday.
Our team awaits their next move. We are 10 times more proactive than before.
This would take months on Twitter, but our turnaround time is now 12-18 hours.
False positives reported and addressed
Another interesting result of this live spam actions thread is that someone posted about their false positive experience with spam actions. A false positive occurs when a machine makes a mistake calling something spam when in reality it is not. In real life, these types of algorithms rely on a multitude of signals in order to identify spam with a high level of accuracy, but false positives can still occur, ideally for a small percentage of the time.
@the_defi_dad tweeted:
“I have to be honest. I was surprised to get a notice that my account was spam. I clicked the request review button and about 12 hours later I was reinstated. I complained about the Grass app being a scam and immediately got a notice. I’m not sure what the connection is, but I’m glad to see the algorithm or whatever decides spam or lack of spam made the right call.”
Bier’s posts received a positive response from X users, some of whom said that some of these engagement chatbots should generate engagement numbers, but that their inauthentic nature made them a bane.
@RandomPerson242 tweeted:
“On the one hand, people clearly like this crap in one way or another. On the other hand, I agree that you can’t let that be the content of the site, even if people follow it. It can’t be a race to the bottom.”
Social Media Is Best When It’s Authentic
Many were happy to see that X was tackling inauthentic spam from AI chatbots. It ruins the experience because people come to social media platforms like X to read and share human experiences.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Naumova Marina
