Crypto Spammers, Bots Activity Saw Nearly 4,000 Percent Increase in 2 Years: LunarCrush

Calling spams the ‘fastest growing metric’ on social media, the report noted that trick posts and bot accounts targeting the crypto community is at its all-time high.

By Radhika Parashar | Updated: 27 May 2022 12:58 IST

Crypto Spammers, Bots Activity Saw Nearly 4,000 Percent Increase in 2 Years: LunarCrush

Photo Credit: Reuters

Social engagement with spam posts have escalated by over 920 percent on social media

Highlights

Tesla chief Elon Musk has been addressing spam and bot issues
LunarCrush is bringing a service to combat spam posts
YouTube, Medium are also being used by spammers to target people

Spam activities around the crypto sector have risen by a whopping 3,894 percent in recent times, crypto intelligence firm LunarCrush claimed in a fresh report. Calling spams the ‘fastest growing metric' on social media, the report noted that trick posts and bot accounts targeting the crypto community is at its all-time high. The findings by LunarCrush come at a time when Tesla chief Elon Musk has been addressing the issue of Twitter being infiltrated by spammy bots in public eye.

The report highlighted that a large chunk of spam accounts on social media are real people, which is why software fails to detect and mark online junk.

“Every bot was created by a human. More spam accounts than you would think are actually people. This is why it is so hard for a bot which was written to detect spam, to actually catch spam. It takes little effort for even the least tech-savvy person to outsmart a bot trying to stop them in their mission,” LunarCrush noted.

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The rise of bots and scams in recent times is being linked with the industrial competition that has erupted in the Web3 sector.

As per the data compiled, spam volume on Twitter has risen by 1,374 percent in the last three years.

“It boils down to two simple things, someone making an attempt at influencing the way you think or someone trying to take something from you. That someone has organised and exploited a large group or many large groups anywhere the cost-benefit ratio allows them to, which almost always is low-income areas,” the findings reflected.

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Sadly, due to lack of awareness, unsuspecting members of the crypto community have been exposed to more spams via social media as Internet adoption escalated around the world.

Social engagement with spam posts have escalated by over 920 percent on public platforms.

YouTube and Medium are other platforms that have been plagued by spammers and have recorded an increase in their activity rate by over 340 percent and 440 percent respectively.

“For a Web2 platform like Twitter, there is a direct incentive to turn a blind eye to fake accounts because it increases the value of their platform,” a newsletter quoted Joe Vezzani, the CEO of LunarCrush as saying.

Last month, Twitter accepted Musk's purchase offer of $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,36,800 crore).

Musk aims to tackle crypto bots, that may be promoting scam posts on Twitter.

“If I had a Dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, we'd have 100 billion Dogecoin. A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter,” Musk recently said in a TED Talk while speaking to the curator Chris Anderson.

Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

Even Mark Cuban the owner of NBA's Dallas Mavericks team had posted a screenshot of spam tweets being posted from another random account, using his name.

“What algorithm could possibly catch this?” Andreessen tweeted, to which Musk replied in a single word, “Humans”.

We add an optimistic roll up to Doge Everyone puts up 1 doge for unlimited posts. If anyone contests a post and humans confirm it's spam, they get the spammer's Doge. Spammer has to post 100x more Doge If it's not spam,the contestor loses their Doge. DogeDAO FTW ! :rocket::rocket::rocket: https://t.co/m6jiDve3AF
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 1, 2022

In a bid to combat the spam army on social media, LunarCrush is launching a new service called ‘Sparks'.

The platform will crowd-source intelligence and our community will start combating this major disturbance on social media together.

“With LunarCrush Sparks you can provide feedback which will train our crypto-specific Machine Learning (ML) in real-time. Initially, this looks as simple as a thumbs up and a thumbs down button on each post. Simply read through posts and if you like them and find them valuable, hit thumbs up. If you think a post has no value, hit thumbs down and help classify it as not valuable, spam, or unrelated,” the intelligence firm added.

Rising numbers of spam posts on social media can expose more people to financial scams and risks.

In 2021 alone, spammy crypto websites registered 9.6 million visits from India alone, a report by Chainalysis had claimed in January.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, India, LunarCrush, Spam, Bots

Radhika Parashar

Email Radhika

Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More