The collective ban of cryptocurrency accounts that had not been seen for many years reappeared, not on Weibo, but on the X platform where Musk gave his free speech.
The cryptocurrency accounts that have been blocked include the official account of gmgn and its founder, the official account of eliza and its founder, as well as a number of well-known crypto KOLs.
Possible reasons for ban
First of all, let’s learn from history. In history, many single accounts have been blocked, such as Trump or CSW, who is familiar to the cryptocurrency circle, but it is very rare to ban accounts in large quantities.
There was an incident on Capitol Hill in 2021, where tens of thousands of pro-Trump accounts were blocked. After Musk took over X at the end of 2022, he cleaned up a large number of fake or imitation accounts, as well as a large number of robot accounts, which were basically cleared around benefiting himself and the political direction.
So there is a view that the mass ban of accounts this time is due to a political meme. As shown in the picture below, this meme is obviously hyping the potential reconciliation between Trump and Musk, because both sides have expressed goodwill in words. Some people believe that Musk did not like this meme and banned the relevant accounts.
But this reason is obviously untenable. First of all, these few accounts are not the only ones that posted this meme. Some of the blocked accounts did not even post related memes, and a large number of other accounts that posted pictures on X were not blocked either.
There is also a view that this ban is basically related to GMGN, because GMGN has been using crawlers to crawl a large number of tweets on X. But this reason is also a bit problematic. After all, there are so many InfoFi projects now, not all of which pay X money and use the API honestly. Basically, they are also crawlers, but the accounts of these projects have not been blocked.
BlockBeats also asked Haze who was banned, and he said that he didn’t know the specific reason yet and was waiting for X’s reply.
Coincidentally, Musk sent a tweet on June 10, saying that X’s algorithm has been adjusted again and Grok is used extensively, so we also asked Grok based on this account suspension incident.
Grok lists some possible reasons:
1. User reports: There are posts saying that a user used a quantitative robot to report Chinese cryptocurrency accounts in batches, accusing them of buying at low prices and dumping at high prices or ambushing through small wallets and cutting leeks through large wallets. This may cause the algorithm to misjudge it as platform manipulation or spam.
2. Content pattern: The blocked accounts frequently mentioned specific crypto projects (such as ai16z, ElizaOS) or interacted with GMGN, which may be identified by the algorithm as inducing promotion or potential fraud. X is sensitive to cryptocurrency content because it often involves high-risk investments or fraud.
3. Algorithmic misjudgment: Groks enhanced automated detection may be overly sensitive to accounts with high-frequency posts or similar patterns (such as Meme coin promotion), resulting in false bans. Historical cases show that cryptocurrency accounts were temporarily banned due to being mislabeled as spam.
Will it follow in the footsteps of Weibo?
This time, Twitters ban on cryptocurrency user accounts easily reminds people of the large-scale bans on cryptocurrency KOL users by Weibo in 2018 and 2021, such as platform accounts such as Golden Finance, Huobi Information, and Coin World, and personal accounts such as @超级比特币, @交易者小侠, @蓝少CX, @李法师Tony, @比特币Caesar, and @肥宅比特币. The relevant pages show that the above accounts can no longer be viewed due to complaints of violating laws and regulations and relevant provisions of the Weibo Community Convention.
After the ban, crypto KOLs on Weibo had no choice but to move to Twitter. Under the extremely opaque censorship system, a large number of content creators were uprooted, and Weibo gradually withdrew from the center of public opinion in the crypto industry.
It is in this context that Twitter has since become an important front for the Chinese crypto community. Compared with Weibos closed censorship system, Twitter has provided a safe haven for a large number of crypto KOLs and project owners with its openness and free expression of brand narratives. However, this safe haven now seems to be losing its protection power. With the in-depth deployment of AI-driven content governance systems (such as Grok), the banning behavior of X platforms is becoming more systematic, more automated, and more difficult to hold accountable.
The difference is that the X platform is not a government-led content review, but is gradually sliding towards a new centralized information control model under the logic of de-humanization and algorithmic governance. Under this mechanism, even if the platform does not directly intervene in content judgment, it may use technical means to aggravate misjudgments, amplify public opinion attacks, and abandon manual review, thereby creating a more opaque expression environment.
Related reading: The world hates social media today
Faced with this increasingly intensified logic of technological blockade, the value of decentralized social networks is being re-evaluated. On-chain social protocols such as Farcaster and Lens Protocol are frequently mentioned again. However, these protocols are still in their early stages, and their user experience and mainstream influence are far from X, making it difficult to replace them in a short period of time.
However, as they are unable to escape the vicious circle of content platforms and face a severe regulatory environment, it seems to be a foreseeable trend for content creators to step onto decentralized social platforms and have freer account ownership.
Finally, for the protection of X accounts for cryptocurrency content creators, the following measures can be taken to reduce risks:
1. Avoid high-frequency promotion: Reduce the frequent mention of specific projects or contract addresses (CA) to avoid being misjudged as misleading content.
2. Compliance posting: Ensure that the content does not involve exaggerated returns or misleading statements, and comply with Xs advertising and financial product policies.
3. Security measures: Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) and check account permissions regularly to prevent hackers from exploiting your account and causing it to be banned.
4. Appeal and communication: If banned, submit an appeal through X’s appeal channel in a timely manner and publicly seek community support
BlockBeats will continue to pay attention to this matter and bring reliable news to readers as soon as possible.
