Elon Musk may never be able to kick bots off Twitter
source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-may-never-be-able-to-kick-bots-off-twitter-183132976.html
Go to the source link to view the article. You can view the picture content, updated content and better typesetting reading experience. If the link is broken, please click the button below to view the snapshot at that time.
Elon Musk may never be able to kick bots off Twitter
- -5.12%
- -3.69%
- GOOGL-3.93%
- -3.84%
This article was first featured in Yahoo Finance Tech, a weekly newsletter highlighting our original content on the industry. Get it sent directly to your inbox every Wednesday by 4 p.m. ET. Subscribe
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Getting rid of bots isn't as easy as it sounds
Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter (TWTR) is in purgatory. The brash Tesla (TSLA) CEO put the purchase on hold May 13, saying, on Twitter, of course, that he couldn’t move forward with until he can verify that bots make up 5% or less of the social network’s total user accounts.
The billionaire, and richest person on Earth, has made taking down automated spam and scam bots, not to mention loosening speech moderation, the centerpiece of his buyout campaign. Musk claims that as many as 20% of Twitter’s users could be bots. According to Israeli tech firm Cyabra, bots could make up some 13.7% of Twitter's 229 million total accounts.
But it might be impossible to eliminate bots on Twitter, regardless of who’s in charge.
“I actually don't think it's possible,” explained Kai-Cheng Yang, a researcher at Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media.
Bots, or simple programs that automate tasks, are largely used to send out quick tweets. These tweets can alert you about a big football game or even let you know the time. But malicious actors can also use bots to scam people out of cryptocurrency or spread disinformation. Countries like Russia have been accused of using bots to spread false information about vaccines and U.S. elections. These malicious bots have ever-evolving ways of evading detection.
“It's an arms race between…us and the bot creators. We might come up with some solutions to identify such types of accounts and then they will try to use evolved techniques…to evade our detection. And then we come up with…some new methods to catch them and then they change their strategy again. We've been seeing this a lot,” Yang said.
In other words, Musk may not be able to get his wish of a bot-free Twitter even if he decides to eventually move forward with the deal again.
Recommend
-
7
Motorola Launches Another Mid-Range Phone You May Never Be Able To Buy ...
-
10
TechElon Musk says he’s ‘not sure’ he’ll be able to buy Twitter after $43 billion bid, teases a plan BPublished Thu, Apr 14 20221:45 PM EDTUpdated T...
-
8
Tech PolicyMusk says he will ban Twitter spam bots, but he has been a beneficiaryMechanized account...
-
6
Elon Musk Just Can’t Stop Tweeting At This GuyMusk has mentioned the Twitter handle of Pranay Pathole, a 23-year-old engineer, more than 400 times since 2018.Posted on May 17, 2022, 3:14 pm...
-
2
Bots Halt Twitter Deal. Elon Musk Says Twitter Is 90% Spam, The Company Says It's 5% Technology ...
-
7
July 8, 2022 ...
-
7
Musk, Twitter, and Bots; Bot Experience; Bot Science Posted onTuesday, May 17, 2022Tuesday, May 17, 2022 Elon Musk may be trying to renegotiate his Twitter de...
-
3
Elon Musk says Tim Cook told him Apple ‘never considered’ removing Twitter / On Monday, Musk claimed that Apple had ‘threatened to withhold Twitter’ from the App Store, but after talking with Cook, the two seem to hav...
-
6
Elon Musk says bots with ‘good content’ can use Twitter’s API for free / Twitter’s supposed to revoke free access to the platform’s API on February 9th — but Musk is already making some changes to the new policy....
-
4
Twitter’s T-Shirt Bots Are Undefeated and Verified by Elon MuskT-Shirt bots have been on Twitter for years, but now they've got blue check marks and prominent placement on your timeline.June 12...
About Joyk
Aggregate valuable and interesting links.
Joyk means Joy of geeK