X Corp. executives revealed that the platform suspended a staggering 800 million accounts over the course of 2024. The disclosure was made by Wifredo Fernández, a government affairs executive at X, during a video link session with UK Members of Parliament on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The massive scale of these suspensions highlights X’s ongoing battle against “bulk, aggressive, or disruptive” attempts to manipulate the platform through spam and state-backed influence operations.
The “Manipulation” Breakdown
X defines manipulative accounts as those misleading others or disrupting their experience through automated or coordinated activity.
- State-Backed Actors: Russia was identified as the most prolific state actor attempting to hijack the platform’s agenda, followed by Iran and China.
- The 2024 US Election: Fernández noted that a large number of these accounts specifically sought to “flood the zone” with divisive narratives intended to undermine the 2024 US Presidential election.
- Scale vs. User Base: To put the “800 million” figure in perspective, X has approximately 300–380 million monthly active users. This suggests that for every real person on the platform, X is blocking or removing more than two fake or bot-driven accounts.
Key Data Points from the 2024 Transparency Reports
While the “800 million” figure covers the full year, X’s biannual transparency reports for 2024 provided more granular detail on other enforcement areas:
| Category | H1 2024 (Jan–June) | H2 2024 (July–Dec) |
| Spam Suspensions | ~460 Million | ~340 Million |
| Abuse & Harassment | 1.1 Million | ~938,000 |
| Child Safety (CSAM) | 2.8 Million | ~1.8 Million |
| Hateful Conduct | 2,361 | 2,300 |
- “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach”: The extremely low number of suspensions for “Hateful Conduct” (compared to over 111,000 under the old Twitter regime in 2022) reflects Elon Musk’s policy of labeling and de-amplifying hate speech rather than banning accounts.
- Government Requests: X reported a sharp increase in government content removal requests in 2024, with Turkey, Japan, South Korea, and India leading the list. The platform complied with roughly 70–82% of these legal demands.
New Enforcement: AI and War Videos
Adding to its 2024 efforts, X announced a new policy on March 5, 2026, targeting the recent flood of fabricated battle scenes from the Middle East conflict.
- The Rule: Users who post AI-generated videos of armed conflicts without a clear disclosure label will be suspended from the creator revenue program for 90 days.
- Zero Tolerance: A second violation of this rule will result in a permanent ban from earning any ad-share revenue on the platform.
Current Sentiment
Despite the high volume of suspensions, Fernández told MPs he is “quite confident” that the remaining active accounts on X are authentic. However, critics argue that the sheer number of suspended accounts—nearly a billion in a single year—proves that the platform remains a primary target for sophisticated, automated misinformation campaigns.
