The Twitter ‘bot’ debate and why you should care
Elon Musk recently offered to buy Twitter, the social platform that is a haven for politicians and media alike. Today, Twitter boasts 396 million users with 206 million active daily users. According to Twitter’s filing with the SEC, it is estimated the “bot” accounts to be approximately 5%, or roughly 19.8 million, of the accounts . In response, Musk asked for the methodology to calculate the bot estimate, for which he is awaiting clarification from experts at Twitter. Since the valuation of the company is in direct relation to the number of human users, the response can impact the value of Twitter overall.
What is a ‘bot’?
A social media bot is an automated program, interacting and engaging on social media in a form designed to mimic a real human. A savvy programmer can automate hundreds or thousands of bots to interact daily. Some are clearly automated and designed to provide daily weather reports; others are designed to pose as single men or women seeking a partner to extort money. Their profiles can be poorly designed with no headshot and nominal posting, or an account stolen from a legitimate person. Some are very convincing and difficult to sort out from a real person.
Why should I care?
Social media platforms base much of their valuation on the users of their respective platforms. Driven primarily by advertising revenue, the platforms are not incentivized to remove the bot accounts voluntarily. If your marketing spend includes social media advertising, bot accounts can impact your success and hinder real prospects from seeing your ads. Using Twitter’s bot estimate of 5%, a $1,000 ad campaign means you potentially paid $50 for bots to view your advertising. Over time, that can add up to wasted time and money for small businesses. Understand that bots do exist across social media platforms, and scrutinizing your results can guide your campaigns.
What can I do?
Social media advertising has the ability to target customers to an accuracy greater than those of Google or Bing. Social media users voluntarily add their job titles, groups they follow, birthdates, etc. This permits advertisers to target audiences with profound efficiency and pinpoint accuracy. If your phone is not ringing after a social media campaign, circle back and ensure your audience is precisely defined and targeted in the campaign. Additionally, check to confirm your ads are running at the times your audience is active on social media. Finally, do a quick scan of the people that interacted with your promoted posts; are they active daily users? Does their profile behave similar to the humans you actually know?
What is the government doing about it?
The mission of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is to protect consumers and competition by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices through law enforcement, advocacy, and education without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.
In July of 2020, the FTC published a report you can find here. Its initial focus is targeting the companies that create the false bots. Their hands are full, navigating the ever-changing digital world is no small feat. In October of
2021, they served over 700 national advertisers a Notice of Penalty Offenses. The advertisers are now on notice that the misleading use of fake endorsements, and fake reviews, could lead to major financial penalties. Fake followers, reviews and endorsements are often executed using automated bots.
Bots have garnered the attention of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) arm of the government. CISA works with partners to defend against today’s threats and collaborates to build a more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future. CISA published this helpful infographic, a must read for business owners to identify bots.
A healthy dose of skepticism and a focus on advertising results will never steer you wrong. Since social media advertising can be very laser targeted, tangible results should be expected. Review your advertising results with an attention to detail to ensure your targeted human audience is being reached.