In response to billionaire Elon Musk’s request for more information, Twitter executives revealed in a press briefing on Thursday that they remove more than one million spam accounts daily. This new information sheds light on efforts to lessen dangerous automated bots.
The presentation follows Musk’s threat to scuttle a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter unless the company can demonstrate that spam and bot accounts make up less than 5% of people who use the social media platform to view advertisements.
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.
