Nikita Bier

Twitter’s (X) Nikita Bier Defends Zuckerberg After Meta Whistleblower Trailer

Legal & Crime Facebook Files, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Nikita Bier, Teen Mental Health, The Social Reckoning, X Platform

X head of product Nikita Bier publicly defended Mark Zuckerberg over the new trailer for The Social Reckoning. The film portrays Meta as a company that ignored teen mental health.

The Aaron Sorkin sequel to The Social Network is set to hit theaters this fall. Its first trailer suggests Facebook fueled anxiety and depression among teenage users.

A Sequel Built Around the Facebook Files

Sony released the trailer this week. The sequel follows a whistleblower who leaks internal company research to the press. The story tracks how those revelations reached regulators and intensified public scrutiny of the platform.

The film dramatizes the Facebook Files, the 2021 investigation built on leaked documents. That reporting showed Meta knew its platforms could harm teen mental health and deepen political polarization. The whistleblower at the center of the case later testified before the US Senate.

Zuck makes a lot of mistakes but this isn’t one of them.

Meta literally had multiple teams of $1m/yr engineers working on teen mental health—and they had the agency to override big product decisions.

The story this movie is about is actually a product manager who didn’t get a…

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) June 10, 2026

The trailer frames the company as one that chose growth over user safety. It leans on internal research and congressional hearings to build that case.

Early reactions online suggest the marketing push has already revived old criticism of Meta.

Meanwhile, the timing adds pressure on Meta. The company is already contending with declining employee morale following this year’s tech layoffs. It is also funding a capital-heavy AI data center project with Reliance in India.

Bier Defends Zuckerberg’s Teen Safety Record

Bier pushed back against the trailer’s premise on X. He speaks from experience, as Meta acquired his teen-focused app, tbh, in 2017. He later worked there as a product manager before joining X in July 2025. His career has centered on consumer apps built for young users.

He made the argument in a post responding to the trailer.

“He makes a lot of mistakes, but this isn’t one of them.”

According to Bier, Meta employed multiple engineering teams earning $1 million a year with one mission: protecting teen mental health. He added that those groups held real authority to override major product choices inside the company.

Meta’s Record Faces Its Own Scrutiny

Bier frequently weighs in on platform decisions in public. At X, he has teased crypto features and weathered content suppression accusations from frustrated users. He also shared snooze data showing users mute crypto more than politics.

However, Meta’s record on teen safety continues to face legal and political scrutiny in several US states. The company points to its teen accounts and expanded parental controls in response.

Therefore, the clash now pits a prominent Silicon Valley product leader against Hollywood’s account of Meta’s history. The debate over which version holds up will likely intensify once the film hits theaters this fall.

The post Twitter’s (X) Nikita Bier Defends Zuckerberg After Meta Whistleblower Trailer appeared first on BeInCrypto.

X Debunks Popular Engagement Myth on Pope Leo’s Tweet

Press Releases, Web3 Engagement Myth, Nikita Bier, Post Reach, Social Media Algorithm, Vatican, X Platform, X Product

X Head of Product Nikita Bier debunked a persistent social media myth on May 31, directly telling the Vatican’s account that embedding a link in an X post does not reduce its reach.

The exchange followed @Pontifex, the Vatican’s official account, which posted an excerpt from Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, with a link to the full text on vatican.va. A user replied, advising the Pope to append the URL in a threaded reply for better algorithmic performance.

X Head of Product Steps In

Bier entered the thread with a single-line response addressed to the head of the Catholic Church:

“Hey Pope, this isn’t true. Links will not deboost your post.”

As Head of Product, Bier thus oversees X’s ranking and recommendation architecture. His correction, therefore, carries as much official weight as any public statement on the subject can carry.

The belief that linking to off-platform destinations suppresses a post’s reach has circulated widely for years. This has pushed many social media teams toward workarounds like reply-threading links.

Hey Pope, this isn’t true. Links will not deboost your post.

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) May 31, 2026

Bier joined X in mid-2025 after building TBH and Gas, two viral social apps acquired by Facebook and Discord. His first year on the platform has been eventful, and not entirely on his own terms.

Earlier in 2026, he became the center of claims of crypto content suppression by cryptocurrency creators, who reported declining reach. A creator monetization rollback followed when Elon Musk paused a revenue-sharing overhaul within hours of announcement.

Bier has also said the crypto bot spam problem may be unsolvable with existing technology. More recently, he previewed a crypto product on X to rebuild the platform’s relationship with digital assets.

The document he was commenting on carries different concerns. Pope Leo XIV signed Magnifica Humanitas on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s foundational text on labor and industrialization.

The 42,300-word encyclical on artificial intelligence argues that technological progress without corresponding ethical development produces only an increase in means, without genuine human betterment.

Leo presented the text alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah at the Vatican. The product chief’s one-line reply may serve as a small footnote to that argument.

The post X Debunks Popular Engagement Myth on Pope Leo’s Tweet appeared first on BeInCrypto.

X to Auto-Lock and Verify Accounts Posting Crypto Content for the First Time

Blockchain, Legal & Crime, Regulation & Policy, Web3 Account Security, Account Verification, Crypto Scams, Meme Coins, Nikita Bier, Phishing Prevention, X Platform

X to Auto-Lock and Verify Accounts Posting Crypto Content for the First Time | Crypto Coin Show

Breaking News

X to Auto-Lock and Verify Accounts Posting Crypto Content for the First Time

Nikita Bier, a product advisor at X, says the platform will detect first-time crypto posters with large followings and require account ownership verification — directly targeting one of the most common vectors for crypto scams.

Crypto Coin Show · April 2, 2026 · Industry News

X is preparing to automatically lock accounts that post crypto content for the first time, requiring those users to verify account ownership before their posts can be seen. The update was announced by Nikita Bier, a product advisor at the platform, in response to widespread criticism about crypto scams tied to compromised high-follower accounts.

“If you have more than 10k followers and you drop a meme coin without any prior connection to crypto, it is always a hack.”
— Nikita Bier, Product Advisor, X

Bier’s statement directly addressed a Community Notes flag that challenged the original Cointelegraph report, clarifying that X’s system is specifically targeting a well-known attack pattern: bad actors gain access to large, established accounts with no history in crypto, then use those accounts to promote fraudulent meme coins or token schemes to unsuspecting followers.

How the New System Works

According to Bier, the detection mechanism focuses on a specific behavioral signal — accounts with significant followings that have no prior connection to crypto suddenly posting meme coin content. Under the new policy, those accounts will be automatically locked and required to complete an ownership verification step before the posts go live.

The goal, as Bier described it, is to “reduce the incentive to phish X accounts” — addressing the financial motive behind account takeovers. If bad actors can no longer easily monetize a hacked account by pushing a token launch, the value of stealing those accounts drops significantly.

Key Points

→X will auto-lock accounts posting crypto content for the first time if they have over 10,000 followers
→Account ownership verification will be required before locked posts can go live
→The system specifically targets accounts with no prior crypto history — a signature pattern of hacked accounts
→The policy aims to reduce the financial incentive for phishing and account takeovers
→Nikita Bier corrected a Community Notes flag, clarifying the system’s intent and scope

Why This Matters

Crypto scams tied to compromised social media accounts have cost users millions of dollars over the past several years. The pattern is well-established: a high-profile account is phished or hacked, the attacker quickly posts token promotion content to the account’s existing audience, and followers who trust the account buy in before the fraud is detected. The entire cycle can play out in minutes.

X’s approach — intervening at the moment of first crypto post rather than after the fact — is a meaningful shift from reactive moderation to predictive detection. It doesn’t require X to evaluate whether a token is legitimate; it simply flags the behavioral anomaly and pauses until a human confirms they control the account.

Context

This announcement follows a broader push by X under its current leadership to crack down on financial scams on the platform. It comes as regulators in multiple jurisdictions continue to scrutinize social media platforms’ roles in facilitating crypto fraud.

The policy is likely to have minimal impact on legitimate crypto-native accounts, which will have established posting history in the space. The burden falls almost entirely on the attack vector the system is designed to close.

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Reported by Crypto Coin Show · Blockchain media since 2014 · cryptocoinshow.com