Introduction
Elon Musk is one of the most popular and controversial figures in tech, so it makes sense that he’s a target for spam bots. But what exactly are spam bots? And why do they want Elon Musk to promote their cryptocurrency scams? Well, no need to panic—let me explain everything.
Twitter spam bots were all up in Elon Musk’s mentions.
- What is a bot?
- Why do bots matter?
Bots are a major problem for social media companies these days. They’re used to spread cryptocurrency scams and other types of scams, misinformation, and political propaganda. In many cases, bots can be more effective than humans at spreading messages on social media because they’re not constrained by human limitations such as sleep or fatigue—or hunger! That gives them an advantage over us humans.
The bots were taking advantage of Musk’s popularity and brash nature.
Elon Musk is one of the most popular people on Twitter. His brazen personality, controversial statements, and involvement in cryptocurrency scams have made him a magnet for bot accounts, which use his name to post spam messages.
In late July 2019, @elonmuskfans noticed that this trend had been amped up even more, with bots posting hundreds of tweets per minute about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum:
“`python
from urllib.request import urlopen
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import time
In an attempt to curb the spread of cryptocurrency scams, Twitter has begun blocking accounts that engage in “abusive” behavior.
Twitter is blocking accounts that engage in “abusive” behavior, and one of the biggest sources of spam on the platform has been cryptocurrency scams. The company announced this week that it would no longer allow users to create ads for initial coin offerings (ICOs) — a popular method of fundraising through cryptocurrency — or crypto wallet services.
In an attempt to curb the spread of cryptocurrency scams, Twitter has begun blocking accounts that engage in “abusive” behavior by locking them and making them unable to post tweets or retweet others’ content until they delete their tweet and earn back their privileges.
Last year Twitter began purging bot accounts in response to public outcry.
Last year, Twitter began purging bot accounts in response to public outcry. Until recently, the social network had been lax about identifying and removing automated programs that were designed to manipulate its platform. But thanks to a new initiative by Twitter’s trust and safety team, tens of millions of such accounts have been removed from the site since December.
It’s not just cryptocurrency scammers that are on the ropes, though.
The good news is that it’s not just cryptocurrency scammers that are on the ropes, though. Some of these bots will be more difficult to eliminate than others, but if we continue to band together and fight, we can make a difference.
Bots will continue to be a problem for social media companies, but some measures have been taken to reduce the impact of these bots
Bots are a problem for social media companies, but some measures have been taken to reduce the impact of these bots.
Twitter has a problem with bots. They’ve taken some steps to reduce their impact on Twitter, such as the recent announcement that they’re going to limit accounts that retweet or like content. This will be done by limiting both accounts and users to 100 tweets per hour, which can be increased depending on verified status and other factors like number of followers and time spent using Twitter (https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/27/18255996/twitter-bot-accounts-limits).
Twitter also recently announced a new initiative called “Trust & Safety” which will include three main features:
- Stopping cryptocurrency scams through machine learning technology
- Stopping abusive behavior in real time by filtering out harmful keywords and keeping them from being posted publicly
- Promoting healthy conversation by identifying less toxic tweets more quickly so that people can engage with each other more effectively (https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/)
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, Twitter has been taking steps to curb the spread of bot accounts across its platform. The social media giant has been fairly transparent about its efforts and is working hard to keep users safe from malicious content. While it may seem like a losing battle at times, the good news is that there are many people working hard on this front—and they’re making progress!
