You probably know by now that Elon Musk put the buyout of Twitter on hold. This comes pending further review of how many of Twitter’s users are spam or bots.
Some think Musk is looking for a reason to back out without the $1 billion penalty. Others think he may be trying to get Twitter at a cheaper valuation. One thing is for sure, he’s not happy with current CEO Parag Agrawal, and neither are many, many other people. Agrawal tweeted out a long detailed thread about spam.
Musk Replied with the “poo” emoji showing that he’s not buying Agrawal’s reasoning. It’s all relatively self-explanatory:
First, let me state the obvious: spam harms the experience for real people on Twitter, and therefore can harm our business. As such, we are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day. Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Some final context: fighting spam is incredibly *dynamic*. The adversaries, their goals, and tactics evolve constantly – often in response to our work! You can’t build a set of rules to detect spam today, and hope they will still work tomorrow. They will not.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially – are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Now, we know we aren’t perfect at catching spam. And so this is why, after all the spam removal I talked about above, we know some still slips through. We measure this internally. And every quarter, we have estimated that <5% of reported mDAU for the quarter are spam accounts.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Each human review is based on Twitter rules that define spam and platform manipulation, and uses both public and private data (eg, IP address, phone number, geolocation, client/browser signatures, what the account does when it’s active…) to make a determination on each account.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5% – based on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
💩
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Musk later added some more substantial chatter to ensure the Twitter community he isn’t just “trolling” Mr. Agrawal:
“So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Later Musk agreed with another Agrawal skeptic with the “thumbs up” emoji:
“Dear Parag, I’m surprised that you say that external researchers couldn’t estimate bots. That’s not true. As researcher that worked ~9 years on these topics (I’m the author of one of first independent report about twitter bots) I can say that’s possible. BTW: open your data”
👍
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Time will tell what happens with Musk and Twitter. Meanwhile, many people who have been permanently suspended for unfair and arbitrary reasons are proverbially holding their breath.
