Study Finds 10% of Twitter Active Accounts Post Spam, Bolstering Elon Musk Skepticism About Platform’s Claims

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorA new study estimates that upwards of 10% of Twitter active accounts post spam content — double the company’s own claims.The report from U.K.-based data analytics and consulting firm GlobalData comes as Elon Musk, the billionaire Twitter power-user, has threatened to nix his $44 billion deal for the social network over the question of the prevalence of spam and fake accounts on Twitter.

On Monday, Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter alleging the company was in “clear material breach” of the acquisition agreement because Twitter has refused to furnish information backing up its claim that fake/spam accounts represent less than 5% of daily active users.A Twitter rep declined to comment.

According to GlobalData, its 10% spam estimate is conservative but the firm acknowledged that “there is no conclusive way of knowing if a certain account is a bot or spam.” According to Sidharth Kumar, GlobalData senior data scientist, the discrepancy between Twitter’s internal sub-5% estimate and the GlobalData model’s 10% estimate is likely due to a difference in criteria as to what counts as “spam.”“The precise proportion of spam accounts is difficult to compute, as it is almost impossible to confirm the identity of the entity behind a tweet handle,” Kumar said, adding that “the definition of a spam account may differ for everyone.

Incessant tweeting of non-original content can be considered spam, but some may choose to see it as a very active user sharing articles/opinions.”For the study, GlobalData analyzed about 4 million recent tweets from a sample of 20,976 Twitter accounts to discern patterns — and concluded that 10.9% of those represented spam accounts.