Twitter Suspends 1M Spam Users a Day, Confirming Elon Musk's Concerns

Twitter is suspending 1 million spam users a day, the company said. These actions were taken due to fears that Elon Musk would back out of the purchase. It also confirms that the platform is really stepping up its efforts in the fight against bot/spam/fake accounts.

Twitter said it is suspending more than 1 million spam accounts a day as Elon Musk can back out of buying the platform over a fake accounts controversy, according to The Guardian. This figure was confirmed by the platform on Thursday and represents twice the number of spam/fake accounts that Twitter talked about in mid-May. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said at the time that spam accounts were being blocked at 500,000 a day.

We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

Musk aims to buy Twitter but has run into a problem: the platform deliberately underestimates the number of spam/fake accounts claimed, while independent research and personal experience of active Twitter users show that their percentage is much higher. The platform initially refused to provide real data, as well as the methodology by which it carried out the calculation. Over the course of several weeks, tensions escalated, leading to Musk putting the deal on hold until he had the data he needed. After he brought in lawyers to solve the problem, Twitter provided data, although not at all that carried real value. It is reported that after a new request, the platform had to transfer the necessary data.

Twitter has said over the years that it estimates that the spam account problem accounts for less than 5% of its daily active users. Keep in mind that the 1 million figure will include accounts that are screened out when trying to join the platform and therefore will never be counted as daily users, explained Twitter.

© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.

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