Why Porn Bots Have Taken Over Your Twitter Feed

Elon Musk took over Twitter promising to rid the platform of what he described as its biggest problem: bots. In his characteristic fashion, he not only failed to make good on his word, but the paid verification system he claimed would solve the issue pushed more fake accounts into users’ feeds. Junk advertising and artificial engagement are everywhere you look on the site, alongside lots of misinformation and extremism.

But since the beginning of 2024, a distinct style of spam bot has dominated the conversation — if you can call it that. Open the replies on any post that has gotten some traction and there’s a decent chance you’ll see what appear to be attractive, scantily clad women teasing explicit images of themselves. Doesn’t matter what the original tweet says, as the message is never modified to sound like a natural response. Instead, it’s a bold alert in spaced-out capital letters: “HOT LINK IN BIO,” “MY TITS IN BIO,” or, most commonly, “MY PUSSY IN BIO.” The suggestion is that if you navigate to the profile, you’ll find a link to steamy adult content.

The digitally literate among us will of course recognize this as some kind of half-assed honeypot. The internet hosts a limitless supply of pornography, and you don’t have to resort to a dodgy, unsolicited link from a Firstname Bunchofnumbers account to get your fix. Yet whoever’s running the “pussy in bio” bots must be having a measure of success with it, because more keep popping up as others get taken down. You also can’t block them fast enough to keep your feed clean.

These spam accounts have gone viral in another way, becoming a frequent topic of gripes about the enshittification of X — and, inevitably, a meme. The blunt and peculiar style of the bots’ messages, combined with their inability to read the room, have made them perfect avatars of social media in 2024, where mercenary self-promotion is everyone’s priority and all meaningful context has disintegrated. There’s no fleeting thought, no cultural reference that cannot take a hard left turn into “MY PUSSY IN BIO” without warning.

“PUSSY IN BIO” has also, it seems, become a kind of catchphrase for upbeat horniness (as contrasted with deep depression) and seductive vibes. K-pop stans use it when admiring the stage presence and dance moves of their favorite performers. Some comedians, meanwhile, are just having fun with wordplay. Throughout this varied usage, it seems as though Twitter addicts — besieged day in and out by the relentless porn bots — cannot get this stupid mantra out of their heads. Rather than trying to purge it, they’re reclaiming it as their own, in the name of humankind.

There’s still the mystery, however, of why we’re suddenly faced with so many suspicious accounts promising graphic content in these exact terms. Most likely, it represents someone’s newest effort to circumvent Twitter’s moderation features — which were never entirely effective and have apparently deteriorated somewhat under Musk.

“Porn spam of varying sorts has been a thing on this platform for years, but the form constantly changes, presumably to evade X/Twitter’s spam detection systems,” says a data scientist and software developer who goes by @conspirator0 and writes a Substack newsletter about social media manipulation. “The insertion of the weird characters between the letters is probably the latest adaptation, and has the added benefit of potentially confusing the sensitive language filters.”

The similarity of such profiles and posts — and the sheer number of them — is evidence of a coordinated network, according to @conspirator0. He suspects that “a person or group running some sort of bulk account creation software” is behind the phenomenon. As for what they’re after, it’s probably not a sexting relationship. The links are potentially associated with malware or phishing scams that could expose your private information. “Can’t say with 100-percent certainty without having tested it directly, but the constant cycling through new domain names strongly suggests it,” @conspirator0 says, “and Norton’s automated systems have flagged the domains they link as having ‘safety and security problems.’”

That is to say, if you find yourself charmed by a stunning model offering naughty pics in the comments of your unremarkable tweet, it’s time for a reality check. The good news is it won’t be long before the spammers shift tactics once again in their ongoing campaign of deception and (presumable) data-scraping. What we’re witnessing now is another low point for a website that has seen far better days, but that doesn’t mean it can’t sink any lower. The next bot trend, depending on how crass or annoying it is, might well make us nostalgic for the days of “PUSSY IN BIO.” Which, you have to admit, is already a comforting refrain in this savage world we share.

From Rolling Stone US.