In recent years, cryptocurrency projects have actively used social media, especially Twitter (now X), to promote their tokens, drops, and new platforms. One popular marketing tool has become known as the “shill tweet”—a request for users to post about a project with specific text, hashtags, or links. It all seemed harmless until mass bans of real accounts began targeting trusting participants.

How it works  

Organizers of such campaigns promise users rewards—tokens, cryptocurrency, or access to presales—in exchange for completing a simple set of actions:  

— reposting the project’s post;  

— publishing a tweet with the required link and hashtag;  

— tagging the official account or other participants.  

At first glance, everything seems fair—the project gains organic reach, and users get a bonus. However, in practice, Twitter increasingly bans these accounts, suspecting them of spam or coordinated promotion.

From 2024 to 2025, mass bans of accounts related to promoting crypto projects on X have become systemic. According to analysts, about 37% of temporary suspensions on Twitter are linked to anti-spam policy violations, most affecting “shill tweets” with crypto links. The platform’s algorithms interpret repeated posts with identical links and hashtags as signs of organized spam, even if posted manually by real users.

What’s especially concerning is that not only new profiles but also old accounts with years of history and genuine followers get banned. Users report that after several such posts, their accounts face shadow bans or temporary suspensions, often without any clear explanations or standard recovery options. Appeals are mostly ineffective—Twitter sends generic violation notifications without specifying the exact reason.

Furthermore, no crypto project—even legitimate and reputable ones—takes responsibility for the consequences of these bans. This is a serious problem: users end up as “cannon fodder” in marketing campaigns, while projects do not defend them and often ignore appeals. Reputation and loyalty to a project do not protect users from being flagged by algorithms for coordinated activity.

Examples from crypto communities show that accounts aged 3 to 7 years have been permanently banned after participating in airdrops and promo campaigns involving repetitive texts and hashtags. After such posts, users frequently lost search visibility, and their profiles became essentially invisible to followers for extended periods.

Why My Account theAlyonushka Was Banned (Status: Suspended)

Analyzing common causes of bans, it’s likely that my account theAlyonushka was automatically suspended for this reason. The main factors might include the fact that I shared information about projects like Zerobase, Nemesis, Neura Protocol, and Nexus. My posts included edited automated posts from websites or Galxe, reposts with promo links including referral links, participation in promo campaigns, and high activity in a short time. Even the fact that real people—my friends and members of the crypto community—engaged with my posts, plus the age of my account being over 13 years, didn’t protect me from suspension (status: suspended). My account was banned on October 6, and I’ve already filed 5 appeals but so far have seen no results or account restoration.

Conclusions?

None of the crypto projects whose posts users like me might have retweeted publicly defended those banned. This illustrates a general trend: marketing loyalty ends where responsibility toward the platform begins. In the end, real people are banned not for fraud but for blind loyalty to projects that use them as promotion tools and then abandon them without explanation.

This experience highlights a systemic issue in the crypto community on the X platform, where even long-standing and active users are defenseless against automated algorithms and the lack of support from projects.