Since its founding in 2006, politicians, journalists, activists, and the general public have flocked to Twitter to share opinions, news, and perspectives on a wide range of issues. Aside from the shitpost memes and adult content, witter has become one of the largest hubs for political discourse on the internet.
However, the recent assertion by cybersecurity experts that "over 80% of Twitter accounts are likely bots" has raised fundamental concerns about the platform's value as a forum for political discussion.
Chances are that you, a friend, or a family member has at one point gotten into an argument with an Al Twitter bot disguised as a real person. "Bots" are automated accounts designed to mimic human behavior, and can be employed to disseminate disinformation, and amplify particular voices or viewpoints. The use of bots on social media platforms, such as Twitter, has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, as not only can follows, likes, and retweets be purchased easily and cheaply, but Al can be employed to train armies of propaganda spewing bots ready to manipulate public opinion at the click of a button. Although Twitter bots can mimic human behavior in both tweets and replies to a tee with only crude and simplistic Al, the recent advances in Al chat software such as Open AI's GPT-4 pose quite a threat.
Dan Woods is a renowned cybersecurity expert, and ex-FBI agent. He released the summarized findings of a study on Twitter traffic conducted by himself and his team of data scientists last August. The study contains many alarming insights, most notably the statistic underlined in the first paragraph. Woods arrived at this conclusion by analyzing a sample of 14 million Twitter accounts, utilizing a machine learning algorithm that scrutinized behavioral patterns and engagement. These bots are a huge problem; Woods makes this clear as he remarks that "allowing this problem to persist threatens the entire foundation of our digital world." On October 23, 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for 44 billion dollars. Twitter has around 450 million monthly active users, meaning Musk paid roughly $35.2 billion for 360 million bot accounts. Yikes.