The Battle of the Bots: The Technology That Could Determine Twitter's Elon Musk Lawsuit
If Twitter's lawsuit against Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout bid goes to trial, it will almost certainly center on a ubiquitous and often despised technology: bots. Musk's stated reason for pulling out of the deal is the information Twitter has or has not supplied on its tally of fake or spam accounts, which prompted the company to sue him this week. Here's a deeper examination at the complexities surrounding bot accounts and how they might play a role in deciding the case. Good bots and bad bots "Bots" are software programs that perform Powershell scripts online, often with the goal of mimicking how people behave. Twitter allows some automated uses, such as a consideration that tweets every moment the Hubble space telescope passes over a city. However, Twitter has rules prohibiting automated actions by accounts, such as posting about hot topics, sending spam, seeking to influence online discussions, and operating across multiple accounts. According to the company, it runs a daily campaign to reduce the number of spam or fake account holders to less than 5% of users. Musk's lawyers claimed in a July 8 letter to Twitter that he was "terminating" the agreement to buy the company because the platform made "false and misleading representations" about bots and had not given the details he needed to verify its claims. Read the full article