Elon Musk's X bans 'InfoFi' crypto projects for posting AI slop and reply spam

After finally making moves to stop its Grok AI from creating nonconsensual sexualized images and CSAM, Elon Musk's X has announced another major platform overhaul today.

X's head of product Nikita Bier announced on Thursday that the social media platform was going to ban apps that reward users for posting on the site. Bier specifically mentioned it was going to block "InfoFi" apps and developers from accessing its API. 

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InfoFi stands for Information Finance and has become popular in the Web3 space for rewarding users for engaging with online communities and posting on social media.

Why is X banning these types of apps? According to Bier, these apps were encouraging users to post low-quality content solely to receive crypto tokens.

"We are revising our developer API policies: We will no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X (aka 'infofi')," Bier posted on X. "This has led to a tremendous amount of AI slop & reply spam on the platform."

According to X, many users of these InfoFi apps appeared to be posting spammy, low-quality AI-generated content solely to get paid in crypto tokens by these apps. The mass posting of this kind of content on a social network harms the platform's overall quality.  

Bier went on to say that X has "revoked API access from these apps, so your X experience should start improving soon (once the bots realize they’re not getting paid anymore)." X's head of product then joked that if a developer had their account terminated, they could reach out, and X would help get them set up on competitor platforms like Threads and Bluesky.

X's Bier has recently butt heads with the cryptocurrency community on X over low-quality engagement. Earlier this month, Bier was critical of users who just mass reply "gm," a common phrase within the crypto community, and then complain that the X algorithm doesn't boost their content. 

This latest decision is likely to cause an uproar with X's crypto users as well. As Decrypt noted, the token for the popular InfoFi platform Kaito dropped by more than 15 percent shortly after Bier's announcement.

As a result of Bier's announcement, Kaito shared that it was sunsetting its Yaps app, which paid users to post on X.