Recently, when I was scrolling through X, I suddenly found that several familiar Crypto KOLs and project accounts had 'disappeared'. Upon inquiry, it turned out they were banned on a large scale, and it’s not an isolated case; it’s a cleansing of an entire field.
I carefully examined a circle, and these banned accounts have three common points:
Had participated in the AI Agent market;
Previously mentioned ai16z frequently;
Have interacted with the founder of Gmgn or official accounts.
To put it bluntly, they were precisely targeted for elimination.
🔍 So why were they banned? Wu Shang tells you, it’s not a content issue, it’s that 'data smuggling' has caused problems.
Many people initially thought it was another policy risk or content red line, but the real situation I learned is much more complex. The core issue is that these projects secretly bypassed X's official data interface and used third-party scraping tools to collect massive amounts of data.
You may not know, X's enterprise API is ridiculously expensive:
Just searching 200 million tweets costs over $200,000 a month.
For those like Gmgn, ai16z, and eliza who do automated retrieval and interaction, the monthly request volume is likely around 1 billion.
What if you go through formal channels? Then it’s an astronomical expenditure.
And the result? Some projects have taken 'wild paths' to save money—scraping.
X clearly noticed these behaviors a long time ago, and this time they uprooted everything; not only did they ban the main accounts using scrapers, but they also took down all KOLs and interactors who had 'binding relationships' with these projects.
⚠️ The Web3 operational ecosystem once again exposes the 'interface cost' black hole.
To be honest, Wu Shang says this has actually had signs early on. Many Web3 task platforms and interaction platforms cannot operate, and the root cause is not that the products are poorly made, but that the cost of data interfaces has completely crushed the business model.
For example, when a user completes a task on the platform, the platform has to call an interface for verification—each time it costs money. Over time, platforms that don’t make money cannot survive.
This time X means business, the entire Crypto + AI matrix was wiped out overnight, indirectly making us see a reality:
You can grow on the platform, but you can't bypass platform rules to 'suck blood'.
🧠 Wu Shang reminds you one last time: the future will only be stricter, not more lenient.
Stop believing in the 'low-cost data scraping' strategy. This time X's actions are not just to crack down on illegal data scraping but also a warning for the 'AI automated interaction' field. The direction of AI x Web3 is correct, but the route and strategy must be legal and compliant; otherwise, it will ultimately lead to self-destruction.
So I suggest those project teams:
For those doing projects, follow the official interface obediently and calculate the costs instead of seeking cheap alternatives;
For those creating content, be careful that your interaction targets are not 'wrongly targeted' by the algorithm;
For those building ecosystems, estimate compliance costs in advance, don’t wait until your account is banned to wake up.
🧷 Wu Shang's viewpoint summary:
This is not a ban on Crypto, but a ban on projects that take 'wild paths' to bypass the system and lack funds.
