X users complain that the latest crackdown on bots purged secret accounts they had used for years to watch and curate their favorite porn
The platform's large-scale crackdown on automated accounts is also impacting people who've spent years curating niche porn on secret X accounts.
WiredJason Parham
Context & Ripple Effects
X had previously formalized rules allowing properly labeled consensual adult and AI-generated material, while also testing adult-content communities. That made discreet accounts a practical way for some users to follow and organize NSFW material within the service.
The bot purge shows the tension between that permissive content policy and account-level enforcement: an account can be part of legitimate viewing behavior yet still be swept up by automated anti-abuse measures.
First-order effects
Users whose private accounts were removed lose years of curated follows and viewing history, with limited continuity for the niche communities they assembled.
X’s bot-enforcement campaign immediately creates collateral damage among accounts used for pseudonymous adult-content consumption, generating user complaints and support burdens.
Second-order effects
X faces pressure to distinguish abusive automation from low-activity or pseudonymous human accounts, especially where users treat account history and follows as valuable personal archives.
Creators and curators serving NSFW audiences may see distribution weaken if followers’ secondary accounts disappear or users become less willing to maintain separate identities on X.
Third-order effects
If broad enforcement repeatedly penalizes pseudonymous but legitimate use, platform trust may increasingly depend on recovery, appeals, and identity/access controls rather than on content rules alone.
The episode points to a durable trade-off in moderation: platforms can permit sensitive content in policy while making access to its communities less reliable through anti-spam enforcement.
The trend: This is one instance of platforms tightening automated abuse controls while struggling to preserve legitimate pseudonymous use, particularly around sensitive content.
Not a single rule was violated mind you, years of curation and accumulation gone in a flash for no reason. The burning of the library of Alexandria's got nothing on this tragedy [image]
@dresexual @tigokitties A lot of those people were engaging tho. Engagement has been down plus followers... they just scrolled thru porn on an alt. Ppl runnin this app know exactly what they're doin smh.
@TomZohar Exact same thing happened to me this week. Appealed and got the same response. No explanation. No examples of content/tweets/retweets that violated the Rules. No way to speak to a human or get hundreds of followed accounts back. Everything is gone.
@SorrowNSpice The fact they* wouldn't even allow me an opportunity to confirm my identity is the most outrageous part of the whole ordeal. I've reached out a second time, but haven't received any sort of reply. *automated responses.
This week we purged 1.7 million bots engaging in reply spam. You should start noticing improvements in the coming days. We will be focusing on DM spam next.