TLDR:
- Scam Incident: Eight people in Hanoi have been sued by Elon Musk’s X platform for operating an advanced click farm that is accused of stealing millions from the Creator Revenue Sharing Program.
- Vulnerability Highlighted: The hack lays bare X’s vulnerabilities in spite of recent software updates, revealing how vulnerable the platform is to being exploited.
Elon Musk-owned X platform is in the spotlight following a publicized lawsuit where eight Vietnamese nationals in Hanoi were accused of running a sophisticated click farm utilizing the Creator Revenue Sharing Program to steal millions of dollars. They used a system of stolen identity-based fake X accounts to post machine-bot-generated content to drive engagement in the way of reposts, comments, and likes artificially. This deceptive strategy tricked X to make payments under its Creator Revenue Sharing Program, which rewards users with payments in exchange for premium account engagement.
It describes this as an “organized fraudulent scheme” purporting to create the appearance of content participation with no such participation. The company of the group channeled money from 125 U.S. bank accounts, via phantom identities, to nine banks in Vietnam more than 1,700 times starting in 2023. X has not quantified the value but describes it as a “significant sum,” and so the company is asking for full recovery.
Sophistication of the hoax was furthered to the extent of infringing X’s trademarks with the Twitter and X logos on YouTube tutorials to discredit X and frighten off advertisers with poor-quality content. X’s Creator Revenue Sharing Program launched in 2022 as a response to Musk’s $44 billion X takeover paid users originally for ad impressions in response posts. But as the offending content increased and major advertisers fled, X changed the program in 2023 to pay for interactions (impressions) from other premium accounts at an expected $8 per million interactions. Even though the change was intended to avoid abuse, the loophole was opened, which the Hanoi crew took advantage of.
Despite X’s introduction of improved interaction verification algorithms in 2024, the incident reveals the platform’s ongoing susceptibility. The lawsuit seeks to recover all funds, impose a permanent injunction, and demand triple damages and additional penalties, alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) through thousands of online fraud acts since 2023. X also targets 25 unidentified “John Does,” suggesting a larger network.
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