Elon Musk’s interest in acquiring Twitter has raised a host of interesting issues and questions. Among the most intriguing is Musk’s desire to verify or authenticate every single Twitter account and his promise to rid the social media platform of bots.
The issue of bots and non-authentic accounts is so vital to Musk, he temporarily halted the deal May 13, questioning Twitter’s own figures about what percentage of the micro-blogging platform’s accounts are bots and how much revenue those drive. In a recent financial filing, Twitter estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5% of the company’s “monetizable daily active users” in the first quarter.
With more than 290 million Twitter users worldwide, 77 million of which are in the U.S. (more than any other country) – the policies of the social media behemoth reverberate far and wide. With tens of millions of U.S. companies using Twitter, including 66% of brands with more than 100 employees which use Twitter for marketing purposes, this is no small matter for the business community.
So when Musk, best known for his roles as CEO of automaker Tesla and space travel company SpaceX, makes pronouncements on his plans for Twitter, users and those in the tech sector take notice.
Many are asking if his authentication and bot-ridding plans are even possible? And if Twitter does try to accomplish those two aims, what will that mean for the social media platform and its users? A third question also looms. What does Musk mean by account verification or authentication, and how far will Twitter go to accomplish that?
One thing is certain. The clutter on Twitter – be that from bots or bull – has chased some users from the platform.
Michael Osborne, president of digital marketing firm Wunderkind, has been a Twitter user since its “early days.” But he doesn’t rely on it much today because there’s “so much inauthentic commentary and spamming. There is so much noise on Twitter right now, it’s painful,” he offers.
New York-based Wunderkind – which helps brands deliver better, more personalized marketing messages – acquired Indianapolis-based SmarterHQ in late 2020, and has a growing presence in Indiana.
Osborne applauds what Musk is seeking to accomplish. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.
“What I believe he’s trying to do is make it a source of authentic content,” he says. “People like me who used to use it as a source of truth, don’t use it anymore. Verified accounts have more weight.”
Some legitimate users, though, could get caught in the crossfire. There are legitimate business – and other – uses for bots. For instance, a web page operator or e-newsletter publisher could use a bot to send a Tweet every time new content is published.
The bots that Musk chiefly seeks to eliminate are the ones that not only post on the site, but re-post and re-tweet numerous times. In addition, more advanced bots know how to follow other bots and get those bots to follow them. They essentially know how to team up to multiply the amplification of their messages, Osborne says “inflating value of some content. It creates a perception of popularity that is fake.”
Jim Goldman, CEO of Indianapolis cybersecurity firm Trava, contends Twitter is putting itself in a tricky spot by trying to eliminate bots.
“Bots are a fact of life in online communications of any kind,” says Goldman, a former FBI cybercrimes task force officer. “I’m not convinced the plan to rid the platform of bots is really well thought out. Without the bots, what is Twitter? There is an underlying thought that all bots are bad. That may not be true. And if not, how do you judge the good ones from the bad ones? Is bad in the eyes of the beholder. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are put in an untenable situation of saying one thing is OK and this other thing is not.”
In some ways, Musk seems intent on making Twitter more open, not closed. For example, this month, he said he favors lifting the Twitter ban on former President Donald Trump.
Osborne says he expects “serious, drastic” changes by Musk. “As a private company, he can do that,” he states.
“If you think about Twitter, you can’t just judge the people on it and say I don’t like their thoughts … or political preference,” Osborne adds. “If Musk is trying to make it the voice of the people, he would believe you should have all the voices.”
Sorin Adam Matei, a Purdue University associate dean of research and an expert in communication technologies, doesn’t think Musk is interested in getting involved in fact-checking, which has been problematic for Facebook and Twitter in the past.
“The fact-verification business in some ways goes the other direction from freedom of speech,” Matei surmises. “You are determining in a way what is to be said or unsaid. If people want to say non-facts, fine, but let them be accountable and then they can be shamed.”
So that brings us back to verifying or authenticating accounts.
Antino Kim, an assistant professor and Grant Thornton Scholar in the Department of Operations and Decision Technologies at Indiana University, thinks the type of account authentication Musk is talking about could have a “chilling effect.”
“To verify accounts, users have to reveal their identity,” Kim states. “Perhaps by doing that, people will behave in a more responsible manner, but there’s a price to pay. Some voices will be silenced. Consider what’s happening in Russia right now … journalists use social media to spread light on what’s going on in the war with Ukraine. Revealing their identification could imperil their safety.”
It’s unclear if Twitter has the technological firepower or resources to authenticate every single account as Musk desires.
Twitter would have to use one of three authentication methods: passwords and security questions, which are relatively easy to hack; a secure physical key or device, which is cumbersome and costly; or biometrics such as fingerprints or a retinal scan, which users will likely resist.
“Elon Musk is going to draw some line,” Trava’s Goldman predicts. “The question is how much friction is Twitter going to introduce into the system. And what’s going to be left of Twitter if they introduce this, and 75% of users decide it’s not worth the bother. Musk is touted for his intelligence. He’s going to need all his brain power to figure this out.”
