Earlier this year, Twitter announced that they would start taking steps to reduce the number of bots on their platform, specifically those that were peddling cryptocurrency scams to unsuspecting users. While the issue of bots on social media seems insurmountable in many ways, a new report from The Verge reveals that Twitter has stumbled upon their most effective solution yet: Simply lock the account of anyone pretending to be Elon Musk.
If you scroll down below any one of Musk’s many, many tweets, you’ll likely see some replies from suspiciously unverified “Elon Musk” accounts offering lucrative crypto opportunities and links to Tesla giveaways. Presumably, everyone who follows Musk and fervently defends his weird antics on social media is just patiently waiting for the billionaire to pass on some secret insider trading knowledge or just drop them a cool million for being such a “good sir.” When they see these poorly worded ads for “blockchain bucks” or whatever, they think they’ve struck gold. Even some legitimate news publications have found themselves getting duped.
Apparently, enough fans of the tech CEO have fallen for these scams for Twitter to consider a blanket lockout of anyone changing their display name to Elon Musk as an effective deterrent against bots in general. As Verge notes, once your account has been locked, you do have the opportunity to verify you’re an authentic human being and then continue to use Twitter with your new display name intact. This is something we would encourage everyone to do, immediately. The only way to properly suss out who’s the real Elon Musk is for all of us to become Elon Musk.
Once you’ve done that, we’ve got a great new digital currency we’d love to tell you about.
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