Elon Musk sent the smiling poop emoji to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in response to a lengthy Twitter thread Monday talking about the risk of spam.
Agrawal outlined how the company targets fake and spam Twitter accounts, describing the 500,000 spam accounts suspended daily and millions of suspected spam accounts locked on a weekly basis. He also warned many accounts that appear fake are often authentic, while actual spam accounts can appear legitimate.
“We suspend over half a million accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam — if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc),” he wrote. “The hard challenge is that many accounts that look fake superficially — are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous — and cause the most harm to our users — can look totally legitimate on the surface.”
The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially – are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
The company determines real accounts through public and private data, including an IP address, geolocation, phone numbers and what the account does when it is active, he said. (RELATED: Elon Musk Says His Deal To Buy Twitter Is ‘Temporarily On Hold’)
Agrawal further argued that less than an estimated 5% of monetizable daily active Twitter users (mDAUs) are spam accounts through sampling multiple human reviews. Musk responded with the poop emoji after the CEO admitted the company does not think its estimation “can be performed externally.”
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
“Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share). Externally, it’s not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day,” Agrawal said.
“So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk later added. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Musk vowed to remove all spam bots from the platform prior to his over $40 billion bid moving forward in April. The Tesla CEO has expressed doubt that these bots can be removed due to the number of fake users and what he perceives as Twitter’s inability to accurately detect these accounts, according to CNBC. Musk said Friday that he planned to do a random sample of “100 followers of @twitter” to test the spam and fake account calculation, after tweeting the Twitter acquisition was “temporarily on hold” but that he remains committed to it.
“If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat spam bots or die trying!” Musk said in an April 21 tweet. “And authenticate all real humans.”
Under a clause in the buyout agreement with Twitter executives, Musk is prohibited from criticizing the company or its representatives on Twitter. The billionaire has criticized Twitter for locking the New York Post’s account over its story on Hunter Biden’s laptop and commented a report on Twitter lawyer Jim Baker arranging a meeting between the FBI and former Democratic National Convention and Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.