A report published by Israeli cybersecurity company CHEQ, on Monday, May 30 indicates that 12% of all traffic originating from Twitter is made up of bots.
The cyber security firm said it analyzed 5.21 million website visits originating from Twitter using more than 2000 cybersecurity parameters to determine the authenticity of each user.
The study revealed that 11.71% of all visits were driven by bots or fake users. The range of malware includes spambots, scrapers, botnets, click farms and automation tools, as well as other forms of fake, fraudulent and non-human traffic.
“The data suggests that Twitter’s bot problem is probably larger than 5%,” said Guy Tytunovich, Founder and CEO of CHEQ, “Our study looked into users who came from Twitter to other websites.”
About a fortnight ago, billionaire investor Elon Musk placed his Twitter purchase deal on hold, saying that the social media giant had to provide evidence that less than 5% of the accounts are fake or spam. Musk had indicated in a Tweet that he believed nearly 20% of Twitter accounts were spam or fake.
Musk’s tweet on May 17 tweet, stated: “20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be much higher. My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.” Musk tweeted.
The report by CHEQ further says, ”If you consider that many bots don’t click through to other sites and only stay on Twitter, then it seems very likely that bot traffic inside the platform itself could be significantly higher than 12%. “
It remains unclear what Musk will make of the new revelations. His bid to takeover twitter is still on hold and Twitter hasn’t communicated the way forward either.
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