Twitter has admitted that 23 million of its 271 million monthly active users are actually bots- essentially computer programmes that tweet of their own accord without human help.
The admission, revealed a company filing and first reported by Quartz, means that some 8.5% of the social network’s active accounts are automatically updated “without any discernible additional user-initiated action.”
This is said to be lower than expected, however. Automated accounts aren’t necessarily spam accounts, which according to Twitter make up less than 5% of MAUs.
Bots can be useful, even essential, accounts for many Twitter users. For example, this bot broadcasts global earthquake information:
A 1.2 magnitude earthquake occurred 4.35mi NNE of East Foothills, California. Details: http://t.co/advU4scJ9r Map: http://t.co/Dqq4CTv2I7
— SF QuakeBot (@earthquakesSF) August 14, 2014
Twitter classes spam as any user that creates multiple accounts, either manually or using automated tools.
People who post repeatedly to trending topics to try to grab attention, repeatedly post duplicate updates, and post links with unrelated tweets also violate Twitter’s rules.
Read the Quartz report here