Gambling on the X Social Network: Against Bots and Spam

Publication date: 19 October 2023

In October 2023, the X social network (until July 2023 it was the microblogging service and the Twitter social network) started an active fight against bots and spammers.

For this purpose, a new subscription model is introduced of one dollar per year. For this money, the user gets access to basic functions such as posting, liking and reposting. When paying, you will have to provide your phone number. Reading any information on the X network will be free.

Now a new subscription called “Not a bot” is being tested among users in New Zealand and the Philippines and only in the web version.

As a reminder, there is also currently a premium subscription to X (X Premium or Twitter Blue) for $7.99 a month.  Such subscribers see in their feed only messages from confirmed accounts and 2 times less advertising.

Gambling advertising is allowed in the X social network. The service permits the creation of ad campaigns to promote betting and gambling, but only with targeting on those countries where these activities are allowed by law.  Advertisers can also place online casino and sports betting adverts only with Twitter’s prior permission.

Twitter (social network X) is banned in Russia. The service has also been periodically blocked in Turkey and Uzbekistan.

Twitter advertising: the audience has become smaller

From September 2022 (at which point the network was taken over by Elon Musk) to September 2023, twitter.com traffic fell by 7% worldwide. Meanwhile, in September alone, global web traffic to twitter.com dropped 14% while ads.twitter.com (the portal for advertisers) saw a 16.5% traffic drop.

Similarweb estimates that for September, the popularity of the network (web version) was down 19% in the US, 11.6% in the UK, 13.4% in France, 17.9% in Germany and 17.5% in Australia.

According to experts, nothing Musk has done has led to lasting improvements to better compete with social media.

• Interestingly, Facebook also showed a sharp drop in traffic worldwide, down 10.4%. The rest of the social networks showed growth, however, TikTok had the largest increase at 22. 8%. Facebook is blocked in Russia by court order.