*Elon Musk has issued a stern warning regarding the rise of engagement farming on X (formally Twitter).
This controversial practice involves users posting generic or provocative content solely to garner likes or replies. Musk announced last month that any accounts discovered partaking in engagement farming would face suspension, and measures would be taken to trace these activities back to their origins.
According to Yahoo Finance, Musk’s post had many positive reactions.
“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,” wrote @rawsalerts in a post.
“THIS is what we’ve all been waiting for. Thank you,” posted @nicksortor on X.
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Numerous X users have voiced concerns over the prevalence of such content across the platform. Some have pointed to X’s Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program as a potential culprit, suggesting it inadvertently encourages engagement farming practices.
Here’s more from Yahoo Finance:
Launched last year, the program required creators to have at least 500 followers, be a verified or X Blue subscriber and have at least 15 million impressions in the three months prior to joining. Creators don’t get paid directly for views, but rather for the amount of people that see ads under viral posts. After a few weeks, Musk lowered the threshold for impressions from 15 million to 5 million, making the program more accessible to creators.
“There’s been engagement farming since the early days of clickbait headlines and listicles in the early 2010s when the recommendation algorithms were just getting started,” said Jamie Cohen, a media studies professor at Queens College in New York. “But with X’s incentives, the recommendation system works to optimize engagement bait so the farmers have increased their tactics exponentially.”
Cohen added, “As long as Elon incentivizes engagement, a new engagement tactic will appear very quickly,” he said. “There’s enough users out there to try every tactic, so it’s only a matter of time before another garbage trend appears.”
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