Mass account banning in the crypto community has reappeared after many years, not on Weibo, but on Musk's free speech X platform.

Currently banned crypto accounts include the official gmgn account and its founder, the official eliza account and its founder, and several well-known crypto KOLs.

Possible Reasons for Banning

First, looking back at history, individual account bans on X have been common, such as Trump or CSW in the crypto world, but mass account banning is rare.

There was one instance in 2021 during the Capitol Hill event, where tens of thousands of pro-Trump accounts were banned. At the end of 2022, after Musk took over X, he cleared many fake or impersonating accounts, as well as numerous bot accounts, mostly targeting those unfavorable to himself and his political direction.

One view suggests this mass banning is due to a political meme, as shown in the image below, which clearly hints at a potential reconciliation between Trump and Musk, as both have shown goodwill. Some believe Musk disliked this meme and banned related accounts.

However, this reason seems unconvincing. First, not only these few accounts shared this meme, and some banned accounts didn't even post the related meme. Moreover, many other accounts posting images on X were not banned.

Another view suggests the banning is mainly related to GMGN, as it has been intensively crawling numerous tweets on X using web scrapers. But this reason is also problematic, as many InfoFi projects are not using API properly and are also using web scrapers, yet their accounts were not banned.

BlockBeats also asked the banned Haze, who stated that the specific reason is currently unknown and they are waiting for X's response.

Coincidentally, Musk posted a tweet on June 10th saying X's algorithm has been adjusted to use Grok extensively, so we also asked Grok about this banning incident.

Grok listed some possible reasons:

1. User Reports: Some posts claim a user used quantitative bots to mass report Chinese crypto accounts, accusing them of "buying low and selling high" or using small wallets to ambush and large wallets to cut leeks. This might lead to algorithmic misjudgment as "platform manipulation" or "spam".

2. Content Pattern: Banned accounts frequently mentioned specific crypto projects (like ai16z, ElizaOS) or interacted with GMGN, potentially being identified by the algorithm as "inducing promotion" or "potential fraud". X is sensitive to crypto content due to its high-risk investment or scam associations.

3. Algorithmic Misjudgment: Grok's enhanced automated detection might be overly sensitive to high-frequency posting or similar patterns (like meme coin promotions), leading to mistaken bans. Historical cases show crypto accounts being temporarily banned for being mistakenly marked as spam.

Will It Follow Weibo's Precedent?

This Twitter ban on crypto users easily reminds people of Weibo's mass banning of crypto KOLs in 2018 and 2021, such as Jinse Finance, Huobi Information, Coin World, and personal accounts like @Super Bitcoin, @Trader Little Hero, @Blue Less CX, @Bitcoin Master Tony, @Bitcoin Caesar, @Fat Otaku Bitcoin. Related pages showed these accounts were banned for violating legal regulations and Weibo Community Guidelines.

After the banning, crypto KOLs on Weibo could only migrate to Twitter. Under an extremely opaque censorship system, many content creators were "uprooted", and Weibo gradually withdrew from the crypto industry's public opinion center.

It was in this context that Twitter became an important base for the Chinese crypto community. Compared to Weibo's closed censorship system, Twitter's openness and free expression brand narrative provided a haven for many crypto KOLs and project parties. However, this haven now seems to be losing its protection, with AI-driven content governance systems (like Grok) being deeply deployed, making X's banning behavior more systematic, automated, and harder to hold accountable.

The difference is that X is not a government-led content censorship, but is gradually sliding towards a new centralized information control mode under de-humanization and algorithmic governance logic. Under this mechanism, even if the platform does not directly intervene in content judgment, it may amplify misjudgments, magnify opinion attacks, and abandon manual review, thus creating a more opaque expression environment.

Related Reading: 《The World Hates Current Social Media》

Facing this increasingly strengthened technical blockade logic, the value of decentralized social networks is being re-evaluated. Farcaster, Lens Protocol, and other on-chain social protocols are frequently mentioned. However, these protocols are still in early stages, with user experience and mainstream influence far from X's, making it difficult to form an alternative in a short time.

Nevertheless, unable to break out of the content platform cycle and facing a severe regulatory environment, content creators stepping onto decentralized social platforms and owning more freely controlled accounts seems a foreseeable trend.

Finally, to protect X accounts for crypto content creators, the following measures can be taken to reduce risks:

1. Avoid Frequent Promotion: Reduce frequent mentions of specific projects or contract addresses (CA) to avoid being misjudged as inducing content.

2. Compliant Posting: Ensure content does not involve exaggerated returns or misleading statements, adhering to X's advertising and financial product policies.

3. Security Measures: Enable two-factor authentication (2FA), regularly check account permissions to prevent hacker exploitation leading to banning.

4. Appeal and Communication: If banned, promptly submit an appeal through X's appeal channels and publicly seek community support.

BlockBeats will continue to pay attention to this matter and bring reliable news to readers in the first instance.

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