Elon Musk’s potential Twitter takeover has brought to light the alarming amount of fake internet accounts on the platform that has been used to push the liberal political agenda. Musk has threatened to abandon the deal if the company cannot account for fake accounts or bots. Twitter later admitted when filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that around 5% of its 300 million users are in fact fake accounts. Twitter initially did not want to explain how they determined the 5% figure until it was revealed that their sample size was just 100 accounts out of 300 million. Musk exposed their slanted study, and Twitter reported him for violating their NDA.
Twitter quietly began to crack down on bots last month, and some of the most followed accounts saw a significant drop in followers. Former President Obama once held the record for being the most followed man on Twitter with 131.7 million followers. After the algorithm changed, Obama lost 300,000 followers instantly. Pop singer Katy Perry, the third-most-followed account and an outspoken Democrat, lost 200,000 of her 108.8 million followers.
A recent audit found that half of President Joe Biden’s 22.2 million followers are fake accounts. Based on the 2020 US Presidential Election, Biden should be the most popular president in history after securing more votes than any other president. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don’t care about the economics at all,” Musk said in April.
Some believe Musk is using the bot excuse to lower the purchase cost. However, there is clearly something awry at Twitter. The massive platform was known to be a left-leaning tool for propaganda, but no one realized how deep the corruption was until recently. I expect more will be exposed shortly.
The post Twitter Bots Exposed first appeared on Armstrong Economics.
