X platform (formerly known as Twitter), owned by Elon Musk, announced a complete ban on applications and projects that financially reward users for posting and engaging on the platform, known as "InfoFi" (information financing).
Nikita Ber, Product Head at X, made the official announcement on Thursday, January 15, 2026, stating:
"We will no longer allow applications that reward users for posting on X (known as 'infomercials'). This has led to an overwhelming amount of AI-generated spam and reply spam on the platform."
As part of immediate actions, X has revoked API (application programming interface) access for these projects, cutting off the primary income source for bots and automated accounts relying on such rewards. Bier confirmed that user experience "will begin to improve soon" once these bots realize their activity no longer generates revenue.
Main reasons for the ban:
- Fighting reply spam.
- Reducing low-quality content automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI slop), which floods the platform with unvaluable posts and replies.
- Prohibiting "attention monetization" through digital assets, where these projects exploit user attention to generate financial gains, resulting in degraded content quality.
Affected projects:
The measures primarily focus on crypto infomercial projects that integrate financial incentives with posting on X. Notable examples include:
- Kaito: A prominent infomercial project launched in February 2025, which saw a sharp drop in its native token price by over 15% (from around $0.58) within just 30 minutes of the announcement, according to CoinGecko data.
- Other similar projects such as Xeet, Cookie3, Wallchain, and others that rely on posting or interaction rewards.
Reactions and implications:
- X has offered support to developers whose accounts were terminated, directing them toward alternative platforms such as Meta's Threads or the decentralized Bluesky.
- In the crypto community, the announcement has triggered mixed reactions: some users welcome the platform quality improvement, while others see the ban as targeting 'infomercials' broadly due to concerns over spam and fraud, with prior criticisms from figures like ZachXBT regarding the negative impact of these projects on the ecosystem.
- Some projects related to (such as Wallchain NFTs) saw immediate sales of assets following the announcement.
General context:
This decision comes as part of X's ongoing efforts to improve content quality and combat bots, especially after the spread of crypto projects relying on financial incentives to boost automated engagement. It is seen as a step toward restoring balance between freedom and quality, though it negatively impacts the business models of certain crypto projects heavily dependent on X as a primary platform.
With this move, X aims to reduce "AI-generated spam" and low-quality content, with expectations of a noticeable improvement in user experience in the coming period.
