“Purge in progress”: Elon Musk has launched a campaign to eliminate bots and trolls on X

Elon Muskowner of the social network campaign to eliminate bots and trolls of the platform purchased in April 2022 for $44 billion. “Purge in progress”The tycoon confirmed this on Thursday.

In recent months, complaints from various users have multiplied due to messages or the appearance of accounts with unwanted content and harassment by “arrobas” with apocryphal identities who, together with others, repeat certain messages.

At center stage are the robot and the troll, two species that thrive on hyperactivity on social networks. According to the Oxford dictionary, bot is “a computer program that creates false social media accounts and communicates with other users.” Many times this communication is compulsive. Trolls are used to refer to accounts that spread messages on the Internet with the sole aim of arousing anger or hindering discussion.

“Please reply to me or @XEng if legitimate accounts are suspended.

In this way he confirmed: “System purging of bots and trolls in progress”.

In recent weeks there has been a wave of spam (compulsive self-promotion) globally from porn accounts or accounts linked to sites like OnlyFans. The US media, such as Rolling Stone OR Forbesthey put a magnifying glass on the abundance and systematic appearance of bold messages and photographs, which had already had other waves even when Musk was out of the company.

A few hours later, and along the same lines, the @safety account provided more details on the decision taken by the company to mitigate an evil that affects users of “. bird”.

“Today we are launching a major proactive initiative to remove accounts that violate our rules against platform manipulation and spam,” reads the message from the X security team.

He adds: “While we seek accuracy in the accounts we remove, we are casting a wide net to ensure that X remains safe and bot-free. As a result, you may see changes in your follower count.

Then, the same post leaves a message to users who suffer inconvenience due to the campaign. He asked that if any “account becomes inadvertently affected”, the user reports the situation via a form.

In May 2022, before Musk’s controversial purchase of the social network was completed, he himself estimated that 20% of the social network’s users were fake, compared to the 5% admitted by the company. “Therefore the deal cannot go forward,” he threatened then, in the midst of negotiations to take over the social network.

As a result, a series of cross-allegations arose between the tycoon and Parag Agrawal, then CEO of Twitter, who responded that the platform suspends more than half a million accounts every day which appear to be impostor. He added that this happens “many times before they are made public” and that every week millions of alleged users are blocked from accounts managed by some software.

Internal analyzes reveal that less than 5% of active accounts on an average day are classified as “spam.”

Musk, who says bots are a plague on Twitter and makes it a priority to get rid of them, responded to Agrawal’s explanation with an emoji representing excrement.

Days before the trade, an estimate released by software company SparkToro indicated that 19.42% of Twitter accounts are fake or spam, although the company acknowledges that its methodology for determining bots is likely different from that used by Twitter.

Forbes, this Thursday, highlighted that bots.”