X/Twitter Updates Anti-Spam Policy: Users Can Now Block Replies with Links

The social media platform X/Twitter is plagued by an army of spam bots, which post phishing or scam content, particularly links related to the cryptocurrency sector, in vast numbers.

Many of these spam bots post phishing links under popular users' tweets or on trending tweets to increase visibility, thus attracting more unsuspecting users to click on the links, leading to phishing and scamming activities.

To combat this potential spam issue, X/Twitter is developing a new user-controlled feature: users can set their tweets to disallow any attached links, meaning only text or images can be posted in replies.

Activating this feature will help users with a large following to control spam and prevent others from falling for phishing scams. However, there is no current control over the increasingly common practice of sending phishing links through images + QR codes.

It is still unclear when X/Twitter plans to officially launch this feature. Nevertheless, the platform's rules already clearly prohibit posting malicious content that is misleading, fraudulent, damages, disrupts others' browsers, or violates privacy.

Posting URLs that are fraudulent or misleading also violates the rules. If other users report such content and X's officials confirm the violation, the poster can be banned from the platform.

Currently, X/Twitter relies mainly on automated reviews and content filtering, which has been somewhat ineffective in combating malicious advertisements and bots. The platform still harbors a vast amount of spam, making it difficult for creators and other users to avoid.