The founder of the micro-blogging platform, X, Elon Musk has issued a stern warning to users about the practice of engagement farming.
Musk made this announcement in a tweet on his X handle on Friday.
Numerous users on X have been reported to be engaging in farming practices to enhance their earnings through the platform’s content creator monetization program.
This trend emerges amid the billionaire’s ongoing efforts to combat the proliferation of bots and fake accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Musk took to X to announce his stance, stating,“Any accounts doing engagement farming will be suspended and traced to source.”
Engagement farming refers to the tactic of seeking increased interaction on social media platforms.
Users employ this method to garner more followers, likes, comments, and retweets without necessarily adding meaningful content. Instead, the primary aim is to boost one’s online presence.
This practice is often utilized by influencers who form groups with fellow content creators.
Members of these groups reciprocate engagement by liking, commenting, and sharing each other’s posts.
The goal is to create the impression of a highly engaged audience and manipulate algorithms for increased visibility.
Meanwhile, X users have been reacting to the warning from Musk. For most of the users that commented on Musk’s post, suspending such accounts would be a huge relief for them having been coping with irrelevant posts for some times now.
Responding to Musk’s post, an X user, @rawsalerts, said; “Finally, thank God! This is much needed. I’m so tired of seeing clickbait pages and those who put out fake news solely for engagement farming just for clicks, likes, and comments, and solely for profit, nothing else. It’s been cluttering up mine and many others’ feeds with irrelevant content.”
Another user, @BillyM2K posted; “If this means people who purposefully lie for clicks repeatedly, this is a long overdue rule, and accounts with major amounts of community notes for being purposely misleading should at the very least be demonetized in my opinion.”
For X user @gorpher_marc, suspending engagement farming accounts would restore sanity on X.
“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,” he post.
