What are spambots and why they're a problem in Elon Musk's Twitter deal

Bots can tweet people, share tweets, follow and be followed by other people. And there are good bots and bad bots.

On Friday, tech billionaire Elon Musk announced he was ending a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. The reason, he said, was an ongoing disagreement over the number of spam bot accounts on the platform. Now, the question of what constitutes a spam bot account, and how many currently exist on Twitter, is likely to be at the heart of legal battles between Mr. Musk and Twitter over the difficult settlement.

What are spam bots? ?

Although sometimes called "bots", "spam" or "fake accounts", all refer to inauthentic accounts that mimic the way people use Twitter. Some spam accounts are automated, but others are run by people, making them harder to detect.

Bots can tweet people, share tweets, follow and being tracked by other people, etc.

Why are spambots a problem?

Mr. Musk has been worried about spambots on Twitter for years. In 2020, he appeared at an event for Twitter employees and encouraged the company to do more to prevent and remove spambots.

Since the announcing his intention to buy Twitter in April, Mr. Musk repeatedly tweeted about spam bots on the platform. In May, when Parag Agrawal, Twitter's chief executive, tweeted about how the company detects and combats spambots, Mr. Musk responded with a poo emoji.

In Six - In a June 6 letter, Mr. Musk's lawyers requested more information from Twitter, saying the company was "denying requests for data from Mr. Musk" to disclose the number of fake accounts on its platform. This amounted to a "manifest material breach" of the agreement, the lawyers continued, saying it gave Mr Musk the right to break the agreement. The next day, Twitter agreed to allow Mr. Musk direct access to its "fire hose," the daily stream of millions of tweets circulating on the company's network.

Since going public in 2013, Twitter has estimated that about 5 percent of its accounts are spam bots. On Thursday, the company told reporters it was deleting about one million spam bot accounts every day and locking millions more a week until the people behind the accounts could pass spam tests.

The company does, however, allow spam bot accounts, which it prefers to call automated bots, that perform a service. Twitter encourages many of these accounts to call themselves bots for more transparency. The company claims that many of these accounts provide a useful service.

How have spambots been used on Twitter?

Twitter defines good spambots as automated accounts that "help people find useful, entertaining and relevant information. For example, @mrstockbot gives people automated responses when they ask for a stock quote, and @earthquakebot tweets about any magnitude 5 earthquake .0 or more in the world when it occurs.

But other spambots are used by governments, corporations or malicious actors for many nefarious purposes During the 2016 US presidential election, Russia used spambot accounts to impersonate Americans and attempt to sow division among US voters.