Key Takeaways
- Binance cofounder Changpeng Zhao has warned his X followers about fake accounts impersonating him.
- The warning comes just one week after the disgraced Binance co-founder spoke out against circulating deepfakes.
- Elon Musk has been tackling the bot problem on X since he purchased the platform two years ago.
Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao has again spoken out against Elon Musk’s X, this time about the increasing number of fake accounts impersonating him on Elon Musk’s social media platform.
The move comes shortly after the former CEO spoke out against the rise of AI deepfakes impersonating his likeness to peddle scam tokens across social media.
Zhao Shares Fresh X Warning
On Oct. 21, Zhao posted on X that his followers should be aware of fake accounts impersonating him across the site.
The Binance co-founder, who pleaded guilty to violating U.S. money laundering laws last year, called on X to do better at eradicating fake accounts.
“Please report them as you see them. I hope X do a better job on cleaning these fake accounts,” Zhao wrote.
On Aug. 1, the FBI issued a warning about scammers impersonating crypto exchanges to steal funds.
The FBI said that scammers were contacting their targets through calls and messages to present themselves as employees of a crypto exchange.
Deepfakes Impersonating Zhao
The warning comes just a week after Zhao took to X to warn users about deepfakes circling multiple platforms. The AI-doctored videos allegedly appear to show the former CEO promoting several different cryptocurrencies.
In response to one of his followers, Zhao said the videos showed him “promoting some coin I have never heard of.”
Deepfakes, which use AI to generate highly realistic videos and audio mimicking real people, have become a major problem across almost all social media platforms.
High-profile celebrities such as Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and Taylor Swift are among some of the most targeted.
However, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Zhao, and other prominent crypto figures are also targeted, usually to promote scams.
X’s Bot Problem
In 2022, before Musk purchased X, formerly Twitter, he claimed that he would “defeat the spam bots or die trying.”
On April 4, two years after his purchase, the X owner announced a “system-wide purge of bots and trolls.”
One of his most significant moves was introducing a subscription-based model through X Premium (previously Twitter Blue).
Musk believed this paywall would deter bots, but his critics have argued that scammers can still get around it.
A recent research report from Clemson University reported that the platform had hosted an army of AI-powered political propaganda accounts posed as real people on X to argue in favor of Republican candidates.
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