A sudden 'digital cleansing.'
On June 12, 2025, the world's largest social media platform X (formerly Twitter) suddenly launched a 'precise strike' against the crypto space—accounts of major projects like GMGN and ElizaOS and dozens of prominent Chinese-speaking influencers were collectively banned. There was no warning, no explanation; Musk's so-called 'sanctuary of free expression' instantly became a battleground of public opinion. This seemingly random banning action actually tore away the veil of the platform's algorithmic power expansion, reflecting the cruel truth of free speech in the digital age.
1. The fog of bans: 'Presumption of guilt' under the algorithmic iron curtain
1. The 'Grok algorithm' becomes the new hunter: Musk's high-profile announcement on June 10 of the upgraded AI assistant Grok has become the 'invisible hand' behind this round of bans. Community analysis shows that banned accounts generally have high-frequency mentions of keywords like AI Agent, Meme, and close interactions with the GMGN project. Grok's machine learning model classifies such behaviors as 'inducement promotion' or 'robotic manipulation,' directly triggering bans. A banned KOL bluntly stated: 'We are like prey 'sniped' by the algorithm, with no chance to appeal.'
2. The 'butterfly effect' of political memes: a political cartoon suggesting reconciliation between Musk and Trump became one of the triggers for the bans. Although most banned accounts did not retweet the image, the similarity in content and overlap in user groups led the platform's risk control system to 'prefer to kill the innocent.' This vague judgment standard exposes the fatal flaw of AI review—algorithms cannot understand context, only keyword hunting.
2. The power struggle: a triangular game between the platform, capital, and users
1. Musk's 'double-edged dilemma': shouting for 'absolute freedom' while tightening content standards to comply with US regulatory requirements. During the banning incident in Brazil, X was sanctioned by the government for refusing to delete 'anti-democratic content'; now, the cleansing of the crypto community is again questioned as serving capital interests—GMGN's web scraping data collection model has touched the profit cake of X and Wall Street capital.
2. The 'digital exile' of creators: from Weibo to X, crypto KOLs continue to migrate but struggle to escape the 'encirclement.' After this banning, the community has seen a wave of 'decentralized self-rescue':
- Mirror sites and RSS subscriptions: avoiding platform censorship
- On-chain identity migration: migrating social relationships to decentralized platforms like Farcaster
- DAO-style operations: rebuilding discourse rights with smart contracts
3. Reflection: When 'freedom' becomes business, what can we still believe in?
1. The 'Brave New World' of algorithmic tyranny: The banning logic of X reveals a cold reality: the platform has evolved from an 'information intermediary' to a 'rule-maker.' The upgrade of Grok means that every click, every retweet, may be marked by the algorithm as a 'risk signal.' As internet users sarcastically point out: 'Here, even breathing has to meet Musk's KPIs.'
2. The dawn of decentralized social media: the ban crisis has instead spawned new opportunities:
- Lens Protocol: users truly possess sovereignty over their social data
- Mastodon: decentralized nodes break the centralized blockade
- Soulbound tokens (SBT): reconstructing the trust system with crypto identity
Conclusion: Under the digital iron curtain, we are all 'experiments.'
The banning event on X is by no means accidental, but a microcosm of the global tech giants' competition for discourse power. When algorithms become 'digital tyrants' and platform rules override the law, every user may become a victim in the power game. Perhaps, as blockchain pioneers predicted: true freedom never belongs to any centralized platform.
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