The total number of bots is irrelevant. What is relevant is how many bots are a part of the mDAU count. The people that are buying ads on Twitter care about the mDAU number, and how many of those are bots (Twitter represents that it's <5%). Someone explained it to me this way, and it made it much easier for me to understand:TAMUallen said:HTownAg98 said:That's what I can't figure out: why Musk is arguing "there's soooo many bots" when everyone and their dog knows Twitter is loaded with bots. What really matters is what Twitter defines as their mDAU number. The percent bots of the total number of Twitter users is irrelevant.Actual Talking Thermos said:
I think the funny part is that if anything Musk has always had reason to think there are more bots on Twitter than there are, because every time he posts his replies and mentions are absolutely crawling with them. This is for one simple reason: big Elon Musk fans are known to be a prime target for scams. Got a crypto or investment or other get rich quick scam? Drop Elon Musk's name, that's gonna be your best bet.
It became such a thing that Twitter made it so you couldn't put "Elon Musk" in your username for a while and maybe still.
It's the only relevant thing at hand. If they can't determine percentage of false accounts and remove bots then all of their advertising metrics are now completely bogus
Think of the entire Twitter user base as a big wheat field. There's the wheat berries that are actually worth something: those are the mDAUs. The stalk, leaves, husks, bugs, dirt, everything else: that's the bots, spam accounts, throwaways, backups, etc. The combine that harvests the wheat is the algorithm that goes through the field, separating the wheat from the chaff. All the advertisers care about is the pounds of wheat harvested (the MDAUs), and how much of the chaff is still left in the harvest that the combine didn't catch (the bots). They do not care how much chaff gets thrown out the back end of the combine.
