Elon Musk’s X has banned “InfoFi” “Post-to-Earn” apps that reward users for posting, citing AI spam.
In a post on Thursday, X Head of Product Nikita Bier said the company is “revising” its developer API rules and “will no longer allow apps that reward users for posting on X,” arguing the model has produced “a tremendous amount of AI slop & reply spam.”
The market reaction was immediate. Tokens tied to projects most associated with InfoFi promotion on X slid sharply after the announcement. Kaito’s token fell more than 20% within about 30 minutes, with other InfoFi-linked tokens including Cookie DAO and Loud also dropping.
A policy change that doubles as an enforcement event
For years, X’s API has been a commercial product as well as an ecosystem layer. Many InfoFi projects didn’t just “use social”; they built their mechanics on top of X’s pipes—tracking posts, verifying engagement, ranking accounts, and distributing rewards based on platform activity.
By revoking API access, X didn’t merely change monetization terms. It severed the core measurement and settlement loop these apps depend on:
- No reliable tracking of eligible posts/replies at scale
- No automated verification of engagement signals tied to rewards
- No leaderboard integrity for gamified “post-to-earn” systems
- No scalable payout accounting for points/airdrops linked to X activity
That’s why the move landed as a sudden “model break” event for multiple projects rather than a slow-moving policy headwind.
Is this positive, negative, or monopolistic?
The case that it’s positive: quality control and anti-spam hygiene
X’s stated rationale is straightforward: paying users to post predictably incentivizes volume over substance, and automation over authenticity. This is part of a broader push to reduce spam and improve the user experience, as Bier mentioned that timelines should improve once bots realize “they’re not getting paid anymore.”
From that lens, X is doing what most platforms eventually do when incentives go pathological:
- clamp down on industrialized engagement farming,
- reduce bot-driven reply swarms,
- and restore signal-to-noise for actual users (and advertisers).
It’s also hard to ignore the second-order incentives: fewer low-quality posts can mean lower moderation burden and potentially lower data-processing costs for X’s own AI and ranking systems.
The case that it’s negative: collateral damage and “rules can change overnight”
The downside is the bluntness. A platform-level API revocation is a kill switch. Even if a subset of InfoFi activity is spammy, the enforcement mechanism doesn’t distinguish well between:
- coordinated bot farms, and
- genuine communities experimenting with incentive design.
And the message to builders is stark: if your product relies on a centralized platform’s API, your business model is ultimately rented, not owned. That’s not unique to crypto—but crypto projects are unusually exposed because tokens price in growth narratives, and X is a primary distribution rail for crypto.
Is it monopolistic?
This is the tricky part, because “monopoly” is a legal/economic term, not just a vibe.
What X is clearly exercising is platform gatekeeping power: it controls access to the data and actions that third parties need to operate at scale on X. That’s a classic “platform-as-sovereign” dynamic—especially when a downstream industry (here, InfoFi tokens) is built around X-native attention signals.
But calling it monopolistic depends on whether you believe:
- X is an essential facility with no realistic substitutes for the affected use case, and/or
- X is using that control to entrench its own adjacent business lines.
On (1), crypto does have alternative social rails (Telegram, Discord, Farcaster, Lens, Reddit, even email). They’re not perfect substitutes for X’s real-time public graph, but the existence of substitutes complicates a monopoly claim.
On (2), Bier’s post actually points in the opposite direction: he explicitly suggested developers “transition” to competing platforms like Threads and Bluesky. That’s an unusual flourish if the intent is to lock developers in—though it could also be read as a public jab.
So the cleanest interpretation is: not necessarily monopolistic in the antitrust sense, but very much a reminder of centralized platform power—and the fragility of “decentralized” token models that depend on Web2 chokepoints.
The bigger signal: “financializing attention” is hitting platform limits
InfoFi, in practice, is a cousin of older web growth hacks: affiliate spam, click farms, and engagement pods—just with tokens instead of cash payouts. The difference is that tokens can turn engagement into a liquid narrative quickly, which draws speculators and accelerates the spam curve.
X is pushing back on projects trying to “financialize users’ attention” on the platform.
In other words, this isn’t just a moderation tweak. It’s X drawing a line around what kinds of markets it will allow to form on top of its social graph.
What happens next
- InfoFi projects pivot or downsize: Some will try to rebuild measurement using screenshots/manual verification, browser extensions, or opt-in identity systems—but anything at scale tends to drift back toward API dependency.
- Migration to other rails accelerates: If token incentives remain the core product, builders may move to platforms with more open graphs (or to crypto-native social networks designed for composability).
- X could tighten creator monetization rules further: Some commenters are already arguing that if “paid posting” is the problem, X should also revisit other incentive loops, including its own creator payouts. (That debate is likely to intensify as X tries to balance revenue, creator growth, and content quality.)
- Crypto markets relearn “platform risk”: Tokens that are effectively derivatives of X distribution may start trading with a clearer platform-policy risk premium.
Bottom line: X’s move is likely net-positive for day-to-day timeline quality if it meaningfully reduces automated reply spam—but net-negative for InfoFi tokens whose utility depended on X-based verification. And even if it doesn’t meet the bar for “monopolistic,” it’s a loud demonstration that the most valuable asset in “information finance” may not be the token mechanics—it’s the underlying platform’s permission.
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