Elon Musk’s $ 44 billion purchase proposal for Twitter seems to be faltering, and the billionaire has been concerned about the number of unauthentic accounts, or bots, on the social media platform. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably come across a bot, though you may not know it.
On Tuesday, Musk said he agreed to buy Twitter can’t move forward unless you provide public proof that less than 5% of your accounts are fake or spam, as the company reported in a May 2 regulatory filing.
Musk has stepped up his battle against robots in recent days, calling on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Twitter’s claims and asking its 93 million followers to comments about their experience using the platform.
According to experts, robots can be problematic for a variety of reasons, affecting the user experience and affecting ad sales.
“It’s important for Musk to have an accurate number of real active and legitimate users because that’s important for advertisers and how to monetize these people,” said Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel, a company that tracks robots on Twitter. CBS MoneyWatch.
So how do advertisers know what they get for their money? This is critical to Twitter’s financial health.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Here’s what you need to know about robots and why Musk focuses so much on them.
What are Twitter bots?
Bots are automated accounts that mimic how people use the blogging service. They tweet to other accounts, retweet user tweets, and follow others, for example.
“At its core, a bot is a piece of code that mimics online human interaction,” said Tamer Hassan, director of human security, who specializes in bot detection.
But robots are not usually on Twitter to engage in genuine dialogue with people. Instead, they are on Twitter to achieve a goal, which can be beneficial or malicious.
What do Twitter bots do?
On the beneficial side, there are automated robots that perform a service, such as the @mrstockbot stock bot, that people can request a stock quote. The bot will respond with the stock price and some other related information (as well as the rather existential question, “Am I a good bot?”)
But malicious robots can cause a number of problems. In particular, some robots spread misinformation, including on key issues such as COVID-19 and elections, while others troll and harass people.
Sometimes these last bots are triggered by a word that a real person uses in a tweet, which asks the bot to send an auto-reply. According to Bot Sentinel, other troll accounts are being set up to attack specific people, such as robots targeting Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Spam accounts are another type of bot, which can try to sell things to people or scam them, and Musk recently called cryptocurrency robots “the most annoying problem on Twitter.” Some crypto robots will try to persuade people to send cryptocurrency to an online wallet in exchange for a larger prize, which of course does not exist.
“It all comes down to the incentive,” Hassan said. “The first is always financial, and the second is stealing information, scraping profile information, and the third is usually influence, and we see it most prominent on social media.”
How many bots are there on Twitter?
This is the culmination of the disagreement between Musk and Twitter, with the company having long claimed that less than 5% of its accounts are not authentic.
Musk has suggested that the fee is much higher. On Tuesday, he tweeted that “20% of fake accounts / spam, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be much higher. My bid was based on the SEC’s Twitter presentations being accurate.”
20% fake / spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims could be * much * higher.
My offer was based on the fact that the SEC’s Twitter submissions were accurate.
Yesterday, the CEO of Twitter publicly refused to show evidence of <5%. This agreement cannot move forward until it does.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
So who’s right? This cannot be measured reliably from outside the company, Hassan said, although Bouzy said his company estimates that robots make up between 10% and 15% of Twitter users.
How do I know if I’m dealing with a bot?
If you’re on Twitter primarily to follow politics or news, you’re probably running into robots because of the incentive to influence people’s opinions, Bouzy said.
“People who are tweeting about cats or origami will probably never see untruthful accounts,” he added.
One way to detect a bot is if an account tweets throughout the day or if the responses feel automated. But robots are becoming more sophisticated and increasingly imitating human behavior, which can make them difficult to identify.
This leads to another problem with robots on social media: the value of the platform for real people erodes if they lose faith in the integrity of the service, Hassan said.
“Trust is one of the most important things on a social platform,” he noted.
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