During the social media network explosion in the 2000s and 2010s, Twitter largely remained unique as a microblogging platform. It valued a distinct mode of content engagement—written ideas were king, quick thoughts were designed to spark responses, and sensationalism often took precedence over nuance. With posts capped at 140 characters (later 280), Twitter rewarded concise, direct discourse. It wasn’t a replica of real-life dialogue, but it was social in its own way. Users would post if they had something to share, reply when they had something meaningful to add, and repost if they wanted to amplify the original post.
The only social feedback for the majority of users was through accumulating others’ likes, reposts, and follows, essentially acting as algorithmic currency when users could have posts go organically viral. This made posting engaging content gratifying, but the rewards were largely intangible (e.g., influence, recognition, or community-building). However, as hundreds of millions of users accumulated to the platform, it only took a small percentage of users to begin gaming the system’s algorithm.
Over time, Twitter became a live ecosystem of narratives rather than a collection of individual thoughts—in turn becoming fertile ground for inauthentic campaigns. As the barrier to creating bot accounts was low, ideas could be artificially promoted by mass reposting schemes, and PR firms specializing in astroturfing ensured that engineered content appeared indistinguishable from real human interaction. Politics, brand building, disinformation, and hate campaigns all took advantage of Twitter’s real-time “trending” page to push artificial narratives. Campaigners weaponized the platform’s use as the default source for breaking news, exploiting the reflexive need to check the site during cultural events. By flooding Twitter with emotionally charged content, they turned Twitter into a machine that could manufacture consensus, where artificial narratives mixed freely with real discourse.
Still, most users engaged authentically, and one of Twitter’s strongest functions was its verification system, which visually indicated a user’s credibility. The blue badge belonged to an elite few—celebrities, journalists, politicians, bloggers—individuals who weren’t immune to posting misinformation but were often trusted to share legitimate news and honest opinions. Combined with Twitter’s internal and third-party fact-checking teams, which deplatformed hateful or inauthentic content, the result was a fragmented but functional digital town square.
In 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Inc. and soon rebranded the social media platform to X. When redesigning core features to meet his “free-speech” vision, he enacted policies that significantly changed the user experience. As revenue tanked from a mass advertiser withdrawal, X removed verification from all accounts and began offering a subscription service (X Premium) to display the blue badge. Initially sold under the guise of democratizing verification and combating bot accounts, the new system did exactly the opposite—bot and meme accounts became the primary clientele as X instituted a “revenue sharing” feature where X Premium accounts would be paid per user engagement. The backend algorithm was updated to heavily promote the content of the newly-verified X Premium accounts, who also gained the ability to simultaneously manage multiple accounts (formerly known as tweetdecking). Though the verification badge retained the same visual signal, the meaning was fundamentally altered—Musk effectively hijacked users’ existing trust in the blue checkmark and reassigned it to a pay-to-play group of people, many of whom had vastly different intentions.
Musk also introduced policies that allowed for more extreme and polarizing content. Studies suggest that hate speech (Neo-Nazism, especially) has seen a substantial increase under the platform’s newly dissolved content moderation policies. Fact-checkers were replaced by the inconsistent Community Notes system, which adds additional context to misleading/inauthentic content instead of removing it. The system, which has gained popularity with other services, doesn’t actually reduce misinformation, with studies indicating that misleading posts may gain up to 13 times more views than their assigned Notes.
Parallel to the existing fleet of hate speech brigadiers, political manipulators, and narrative campaigners, X Premium became an invaluable tool for engagement farmers. Authentic virality—the last remnant of genuine social narratives—has become co-opted by actors who turned the previously intangible clout into financial gain.
Engagement farmers are a small but influential group on social media platforms that exploit algorithms to boost visibility, followers, or external traffic rather than contributing meaningful content. Their output often relies on stolen memes, inflammatory or polarizing statements, and deceptively human interactions to incite user engagement. Over time, they developed a recipe for virality—a blend of humor, insight, shock, or current events typically triggers engagement from thousands of users.

See above—engagement farming rings have developed strategies to game the X Premium payouts and covertly advertise third-party websites through viral posts. In these schemes, one X Premium account coordinates with an original poster—often using stolen content—and manufactures viral-ready posts. They coordinate multiple accounts and engage with similar users to boost visibility via reposts and likes. Most of these accounts also participate in affiliate programs with gambling websites to display their logo, receiving payment based on total engagement. It’s one of the most insidious marketing ploys on social media today, and likely a blueprint for even more effective tactics in the future.
X, like most social media platforms, has little incentive to deplatform or discourage engagement farming, since strong engagement numbers bolster its own metrics. X, Facebook, and Instagram measure success primarily by how long users stay on the platform, not by the quality of the content they host. By prioritizing content that provokes strong reactions—positive or negative—platforms keep users engaged, even if it harms public health or fuels misinformation. Rage bait reliably drives traffic, and though it may not seem as dangerous as political disinformation, repeated exposure to toxic content has long-term effects on emotional well-being.
Users are taught to question traditional news coverage, but social virality can feel organic. Memes, viral posts, and off-the-cuff commentary often appear to reflect real-time public sentiment, but in truth, they are easily manipulated. Engagement farming doesn’t just warp virality; it warps reality. If a meme or idea goes viral often enough, people may assume it’s widely endorsed. This triggers a digital perception loop:
A viral-ready phrase, meme, or joke is posted.
Engagement rings or campaigners artificially amplify it.
Casual users see it everywhere and mistake it for widespread public opinion.
They adopt or normalize it, consciously or otherwise.
This is a direct outcome of how X prioritizes virality over substance—because even if an idea is false or manufactured, enough repetition can make it feel like social truth. People believe they’re witnessing genuine cultural moments, and a degree of truth does remain, but the share of engineered content is steadily rising.
Ultimately, X is no longer a purely social service—the authentic human conversation that once anchored it has been overshadowed by content engineering and engagement farming. X benefits from years of user growth and cultural relevance, but ordinary users stand to lose the most. They aren’t just spending time on a manipulated platform—they’re absorbing and internalizing its distortions, reshaping their perception of reality itself.
I have no experience with Twitter/X and for many reasons, glad I never joined. Unfortunately, Facebook and Instagram are pretty much the same now too. We are being watched, heard, definitely manipulated for money. You’ve heard the saying, ‘money is the root of all evil’, so true!
Reading this post, I found myself wistfully reflecting: "there was a time when Twitter||X wasn't just about narratives-contesting-each-other?"
Sadly, I think by the time I first investigated Twitter, nuanced discussion was long gone.