Elon Musk Says 90 Percent Of Comments On His Twitter Account Are Bots

Musk has terminated the $44-billion Twitter takeover deal.

The Musk-Twitter trial is slated to begin on October 17.

Source : AFP

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, on Tuesday again hit out at Twitter, saying 90 percent of the comments on his tweets are actually bots or spam replies. Musk shared screenshots of replies by the fake Twitter account of Changpeng Zhao, Founder and CEO of leading crypto exchange Binance.

"And 90 percent of my comments are bots," he said in a tweet.

And 90% of my comments are bots 🤖 pic.twitter.com/A7RKyNJZoR

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 5, 2022

A follower asked Musk: "Do you think the number of likes you get has a similar proportion of bots vs humans at 90%?"

Earlier this month, Musk went after Parag Agrawal-led platform after a top cybersecurity expert claimed that as high as eight in 10 Twitter accounts are fake.

Dan Woods, Global Head of Intelligence at cybersecurity company F5, told The Australian that more than 80 percent of Twitter accounts are probably bots — a massive claim as Twitter says only 5 percent of its users are bots/spams.

"Sure sounds higher than 5 percent," tweeted Musk, along with tagging the news article.

"On a $/bot basis, this deal is awesome," he added.

Musk has terminated the $44-billion Twitter takeover deal, and the matter is now in a US court, over the presence of bots on the platform, and seeks answers from Agrawal via an open debate.

The Musk-Twitter trial is slated to begin on October 17.

According to Woods, a former CIA and FBI cybersecurity specialist, both Musk and Twitter have underestimated the bot problem on the micro-blogging platform.

Late last month, Musk's legal team filed an additional notice to terminate his $44-billion deal to acquire Twitter, citing several reasons.

Musk has mentioned about the whistleblower in the new filing to scrap the deal. The recent filings come after Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko, alleged earlier this month "extreme, egregious deficiencies" by the social media platform related to privacy, security, and content moderation.

Musk’s legal team had filed a notice with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to terminate the Twitter deal on July 8. They alleged that Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations. According to the follow-up notice the SEC, allegations made by Zatko as additional reasons to terminate the deal.

(With inputs from IANS)