Bot Battle: The tech that could decide Twitter’s Elon Musk lawsuit

If Twitter’s lawsuit over Elon Musk’s $44 billion buyout bid ever goes to trial, the case will likely center on a ubiquitous and often unloved technology: bots.

The information Twitter has or hasn’t provided about the number of fake or spam accounts is Musk’s stated reason for pulling out of the deal — a move that prompted the company to sue him this week.

Here’s a closer look at the complications surrounding bot accounts and how they would be key in deciding the case.

Good bot, bad bot
At a basic level, “bots” are software programs that perform automated tasks online, often with the goal of mimicking human behavior.

Twitter tolerates some automated uses, such as an account that tweets every time the Hubble Space Telescope traverses the sky over a particular city.

But Twitter has rules about automated actions by accounts, including blocking software from posting on hot topics, firing spam, trying to influence online conversations, and working across multiple accounts.

The company says it runs a daily campaign against spam or fake accounts that limit their number to less than five percent of users.

Musk’s attorneys, who informed Twitter on July 8 that he was “terminating” the agreement to buy the company, claimed the platform had made “false and misleading statements” about bots and failed to provide details he needed to make his case. verify claims.

Thorny question
Determining the number of bots on the site is a bit of an art because the number is determined in part by Twitter’s internal definitions and the employees who apply the rules.

While some cases are clear violations, some may require the judgment of people weighing various facts.

“People can disagree about what should be considered a bot or a spam account,” said Edwin Chen, a former Twitter employee who is now CEO of content moderation company Surge AI.

The figure would also be tricky for an outsider like Musk to confirm, as the bot weeding process could involve checking IP or email addresses or other sensitive user data.

“I think a lot of people, not even just my former colleagues, but people in general within the tech industry, know that this is a thorny, thorny question,” Chen added.

Twitter’s lawsuit, which is urging a court to force Musk to honor his takeover offer, could result in litigation or settlement talks that would have to delve into the finer points of things like the company’s bot definitions and policies.

Musk’s lawyers said he had already asked for “Twitter’s methodology and performance data,” but had not received it about finding and suspending spam and fake accounts.

“Basically, Twitter has not provided information that Mr. Musk has asked for for nearly two months,” the lawyers wrote, laying out the argument to cancel the deal.

The deal with Twitter
It has been speculated that the bot’s problem — with its tricky, detailed, and case-by-case aspects — is just a convenient way for Musk to give up or renegotiate his proposal.

Still, bots are a problem online.

“Bad actors have nearly infinite resources and incentives to use bots for nefarious purposes,” said Tamer Hassan, co-founder and head of cybersecurity firm HUMAN.

Bots are used in more than three quarters of the security and fraud incidents that happen online, from spreading socially divisive messages to getting hold of popular concert tickets and hacking, Hassan told TAUT.

Twitter also makes money from advertising and paying marketers to reach people, not software.

So “advertising to bots is not going to have a good close because bots don’t buy products,” analyst Rob Enderle previously told TAUT.

If advertisers pay Twitter fees based on how many people see ads, and those numbers are inflated by bots in the online audience, they’re being overcharged, Enderle added.

If Twitter has a lot more bots than it shows, revenue could drop when those accounts are exposed and closed.

Or as Musk’s lawyers put it, the real daily users of Twitter who can be shown ads are “an important part of the company’s business, as about 90 percent of its revenue comes from ads.” The AU Times