Indian Developer's Twitter Bot ‘Explain This Bob’ Suspended After Elon Musk Flags It as ‘Scam Crypto Account’

Musk, on June 18, tweeted that this ‘Explain This Bob’ account “sure looks like a scam crypto account.”

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by Manas Mitul | Updated: 19 June 2023 14:28 IST

Indian Developer's Twitter Bot ‘Explain This Bob’ Suspended After Elon Musk Flags It as ‘Scam Crypto Account’

Photo Credit: Twitter/@kangpromos

Musk has promised Twitter users that he would rid the platform of scam bot accounts

Highlights

‘Explain This Bob’ bot account had over 4,00,000 followers
Prabhu Biswal is yet to comment on the situation
Bob coin has tumbled in prices by over 30 percent in recent hours

Elon Musk, who has vowed to rid Twitter of bots and scam accounts, has suspended Indian developer Prabhu Biswal's popular bot account. Biswal ran a Twitter account ‘Explain This Bob', which was linked to a popular memecoin, BOB. The account was integrated with OpenAI's GPT-4 model, that understood and responded to tweets with a brief explanation when tagged in the replies to the original tweet. Musk, reportedly, is of the belief that this account was manipulating the prices of BOB.

Musk, on June 18, tweeted that the ‘Explain This Bob' account “sure looks like a scam crypto account,” and the handle was suspended from the micro-blogging site soon after.

This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2023

Followed by over 4,00,000 people before its suspension, the ‘Explain This Bob' Twitter bot had jumped into the limelight in April after Musk himself had reacted to a tweet from @ExplainThisBob saying, “I love Bob”.

I love Bob
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

At the time of writing, BOB is trading at $0.00001942 (roughly Rs. 0.0016) as per CoinMarketCap.

Created in April this year on the Ethereum blockchain, the BOB coin has a maximum circulating supply of 690 billion and it currently has a fully diluted market cap of $13.3 million (roughly Rs. 109 crore).

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Now that Musk has flagged the ‘Explain This Bob' account, the memecoin has recorded a 30 percent drop in its value over the last 24 hours.

In recent hours, #FreeBob has been circulating on Twitter, urging Musk to reinstate the suspended Twitter bot.

If $BOB is a scam then everything on twitter is a scam.#FREEBOB

Retweet and mention @elonmusk :point_down: pic.twitter.com/ZcF3uGsPXv
— ᴄʀʏᴘᴛᴏɢᴇᴛʜᴇʀ (@Cryptogether_) June 18, 2023

Elon musk called $BOB (@ExplainThisBob) scam, no clear correlation!

While many scam accounts with links ready to drain our wallets are hovering over our feeds!#FREEBOB pic.twitter.com/VXZzfoKnGr
— Miks | !SKULLS (@kangpromos) June 18, 2023

#FREEBOB $BOB A coin that's listed on 22 different markets with near 40 million volume is NOT a scam. In April Elon even said “I love Bob” before continuing to interact for months on end pic.twitter.com/yDZar6oQAi
— ฿ITCOIN:hamsa:TRAPPΞR (@BITCOINTRAPPER) June 18, 2023

As of now, Biswal has not responded to Twitter's suspension.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,61,900 crore) last year. As part of his main agendas on revamping Twitter, Musk promised users that he would rid the platform of crypto-related scam bot accounts.

Crypto scammers have been flocking Twitter to get a hold of unsuspecting victims and their activities have only risen in recent times.

Last year in May, a report by crypto intelligence firm LunarCrash said that scam activities on Twitter had spiked by 3,894 percent at the time.

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The report had also highlighted that the social engagement with spam posts had escalated by over 920 percent on public platforms as of last year.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Elon Musk, Twitter, Scam

Radhika Parashar

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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