Twitter has stated that it is blocking more than a million spam accounts daily as Elon Musk’s bid to take over the company heats up.
More information about the company’s efforts to lessen the automated accounts that are present on the platform and are used to disseminate spam and scams was provided.
Elon Musk has criticized the business for not doing enough to handle those automated accounts on numerous occasions. Additionally, he has asked for more details on the scope of the issue and the potential solutions.
In a briefing where they unveiled new data and procedures aimed at halting the spread of the bots, Twitter executives attempted to provide some of that information.
The update comes after Musk threatened to scuttle a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter unless the company could demonstrate that spam and bot accounts constituted less than 5% of users who saw advertisements on the social media platform.
After purchasing Twitter, Musk previously stated that one of his top priorities would be to “defeat the spam bots or die trying.”
During a conference call, the company reaffirmed that less than 5% of users receive advertising from spam accounts, a statistic that hasn’t changed since the company’s 2013 public filings.
In order to determine and report to shareholders the percentage of spam and bot accounts on the service, Twitter said human reviewers manually examine thousands of Twitter accounts at random using a combination of public and private data.
The business stated that it does not think such accounts could be calculated externally because it would require private information, but it would not elaborate on the kind of information it would give Musk.