Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and the company’s potential buyer, Elon Musk, continue to debate over Bot accounts on the platform. Recently at a summit, Musk highlighted that his $44 billion offer for Twitter might need some revision as believes that one cannot pay the “same price for something that is much worse than they [Twitter] claimed", referring to bad Bots that lead to trolling. Following Musk’s remarks, Twitter CEO Agrawal refuted saying that Bot accounts on Twitter may seem more than the company’s own estimates of 5 percent of its DAU (daily active users). However, he maintains that many accounts with bot-like behaviour are actually managed by real people.
This raises the question of why Twitter allows bot on the platform in the first place and the company’s seemingly failing attempts to tackle them. It also raises a bigger question of whether all bot accounts are bad and what is the correct way forward?
What Are Twitter Bots
Let’s start with the basics, what are Twitter Bots and are they managed by humans? The simple answer is, no. These are automated accounts created by third-party vendors using Twitter’s public API. Companies or organisations work with third-party firms to automate their replies or messages (even likes) to basically reduce dependency on humans. Here’s how Twitter describes Bots:
“There’s a lot of understandable confusion and we need to do a better job of explaining ourselves. In sum, a bot is an automated account — nothing more or less."
On the other hand, Twitter has also laid down some notes for bad Bots. In a blog post, the company explained that it blocks Bots that:
- Malicious use of automation to undermine and disrupt the public conversation, like trying to get something to trend
- Artificial amplification of conversations on Twitter, including through creating multiple or overlapping accounts
- Generating, soliciting, or purchasing fake engagements
- Engaging in bulk or aggressive tweeting, engaging, or following
- Using hashtags in a spammy way, including using unrelated hashtags in a tweet (aka “hashtag cramming")
What’s the Purpose of Twitter Bots
There’s no simple answer, but if used correctly, Twitter Bots can be helpful. For instance, they can be useful for broadcasting important content like weather emergencies in real-time, sharing informative content en masse, and generating automatic replies via direct messaging. As mentioned earlier, Twitter bots also can be designed for the malicious purposes of platform intimidation and manipulation — like spreading fake news campaigns, spamming, violating others’ privacy, and more.
This is why bots or automated accounts generally have a bad impression and Musk seemingly wants to tackle this “problem". At the All-In Summit 2022 conference, Musk said, “The more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow." He added that Twitter uses a “complex methodology" to calculate bot accounts.
How Many Bots Are There On Twitter
Independent researchers (via Reuters) have estimated that anywhere from 9 percent to 15 percent of the millions of Twitter profiles are bots. Twitter’s official estimates are five percent of its daily active users (roughly 229 million users as per Twitter’s last quarterly report). Musk, on the other hand, does not believe these estimates and even claims that Bot accounts on Twitter are significantly larger.
What is Twitter Saying About Bot Accounts
In his series of tweets, Twitter CEO said that many accounts with bot-like spam behaviour are managed by real people. He said, “We know we aren’t perfect at catching spam. And so this is why, after all the spam removal I talked about above, we know some still slips through. We measure this internally. And every quarter, we have estimated that
Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews (in replicate) of thousands of accounts, that are sampled at random, consistently over time, from *accounts we count as mDAUs*. We do this every quarter, and we have been doing this for many years.— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Agrawal’s views were also highlighted in Twitter’s blog post in September 2021. It highlights “four truths" about Bot accounts, such as:
- Don’t assume an account with a peculiar name must be a bot.
- Some people just Tweet a whole lot (like hundreds of Tweets a day), but it doesn’t mean they are bots.
- Real people have opinions that you will disagree with — it doesn’t mean they are part of a grand manipulation scheme.
- Seeing doesn’t always lead to believing.
What’s the Way Forward
By the company’s own admission, Twitter isn’t doing a great job at removing remaining spam or bad Bots from its platform. It has reiterated its moves to separate good Bots from bad Bots or remove spammy accounts, but more clarity is required. Twitter even rolled out a dedicated sticker for good Bot accounts, but the roll out appears to be slow.
WATCH VIDEO: Elon Musk Buys Twitter: Here Are 4 Big Changes You Can Expect
On the question of whether Musk will be able to solve the bad Bot problem, we are awaiting more details from the potential Twitter buyer.
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