Published 2 years ago • 7 minute read

As Musk Prepares To Take On Twitter’s Spam Bots, Decentralization Might Be His Biggest Weapon

With Elon Musk now firmly in control of Twitter after convincing its board of directors to accept his $44 billion offer to buy the company, one of his first missions will be to tackle the plague of so-called spam bots. 

Musk declared his intention to take the fight to these automated accounts several days before he finalized a deal to acquire Twitter, saying in an April 21 tweet that if his bid succeeds, “we will defeat the spam bots or die trying.” 

The world’s richest man has been one of the loudest critics of the antics of spam bots on Twitter, expressing concerns on multiple occasions in the past that scammers are using them to swindle investors out of money, usually crypto investors.  

The Spam Bot Problem

Musk is not wrong about the problem. A May 2021 report by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission revealed that consumers had lost over $2 million in the previous year to cryptocurrency scammers that impersonate famous people or companies on Twitter using bot accounts. It said the average median loss per consumer was $1,900, meaning that many lost a lot more than that. 

“Scammers will use whatever story works to get people to send crypto,” The FTC said in its report. “That often involves impersonating a government authority or a well-known business.” 

One of the most common scams to emerge over the past year is the “crypto support bot scam” that sees automated accounts on Twitter pose as the support staff of popular cryptocurrency firms. These scammers monitor the Twitter platform for tweets with specific keywords such as the names of companies like “MetaMask”, “Phantom” and “TrustWallet” that include other phrases or words such as “help”, “support” or “assistance”. Upon detecting such a tweet, which is usually an innocent user asking for help from one of these companies, the scammer uses bots to send an instant reply offering assistance and urging them to click a link or engage with them through some other channel. The scammers attempt to use social engineering to trick users into giving them the recovery phrase for their cryptocurrency wallet. If the scammer gets that, they’ll inevitably clear out the user’s wallet. 

Other examples of spam bots include those that set up fake accounts purporting to be famous people who are willing to donate cryptocurrency to their followers. Scammers have previously masqueraded as high-profile individuals like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and posted tweets asking for users to send them $1,000 in return for double that amount. 

It goes without saying that these kinds of scams and fake accounts are in violation of Twitter’s policy against deceptive accounts, but until now the platform has struggled to control spam bots due to the sheer number of them. While it’s difficult to put a finger on exactly how many fake accounts there are on Twitter, one widely cited study from 2017 suggested that up to 48 million accounts (around 15%) on the platform could be spam bots. 

Musk has said little in terms of exactly how he intends to combat spam bots. Shortly after announcing he’d succeeded in his takeover of the company, he provided a statement that listed some of his goals for the platform.   

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

Fighting Fake Accounts

The consensus is that Musk will have his work cut out trying to fight Twitter’s spam bots even if he is now the platform’s all-powerful overlord, but that hasn’t prevented some high profile crypto industry personalities from offering suggestions. 

Renowned Bitcoin investor Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy, recently suggested using orange tick marks on Twitter profiles as a way of separating real humans from bot accounts. Saylor’s proposal is that Twitter users who want to be identified as human can post $20 using the Bitcoin Lightning Network. That money would act as a kind of security deposit, he said. Users who do so will get an orange tick mark next to their profile. Bad actors who try to do so will forfeit their $20 deposit if they’re identified as such. Not only would that disincentivize scammers, it would also add a nice little revenue stream for Twitter. 

Saylor’s idea is certainly original, though Twitter users were immediately critical of it, saying the necessary expense would likely rule out a big percentage of the platform’s users. For Twitter users in developing countries $20 is likely more than they can afford, especially as regular users won’t likely ever be able to claim it back without rescinding their newfound authenticity. 

Decentralization: Musk’s Secret Weapon?

A more radical solution to tacking Twitter’s spam bots might be to pursue the idea of decentralization, as suggested by Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Input-Output, the company that’s building the Cardano blockchain ecosystem. Hoskinson, who previously declared a willingness to help Musk build a decentralized alternative to Twitter should his bid to buy the company fail, reacted warmly to Musk’s promise to take action against spam bots. 

It’s hard to see Musk wanting to work with Hoskinson to create a decentralized Twitter rival now, but the idea of less centralized control is clearly one that appeals to him. Several weeks ago, Musk asked his almost 100 million followers on the platform for their opinion on the merits of a decentralized social media platform that advocates free speech. The vast majority supported such a move. 

A decentralized social media platform is one that runs on independent servers as opposed to centralized ones owned by a big corporation. Examples include Mastodon, which is based on open-source software and is actually similar in some ways to Twitter. Another popular one is Steem, which is built atop of a social blockchain network, with data entries stored across multiple servers located all over the world. This data can be seen in real-time by anyone on the network, making it as transparent as it’s possible to be. 

If Musk does want to create a more decentralized version of Twitter, he could do a lot worse than to work with Hoskinson. The Cardano blockchain ecosystem is home to some of the world’s most privacy projects. 

Profila for instance is a privacy-based advertising platform built on a technology called zero-knowledge proofs that ensures social media users retain full ownership of their data as they create it through their online activities. Profila provides tools for users to decide which companies and individuals can access their data, ensuring they will only ever be targeted for advertising by organizations of their choosing. So someone who is seriously into Nike brand clothing and sneakers would allow that company to access their data, so they can benefit from a more personalized experience when interacting with the brand. 

Profila’s controls are extremely fine-grained, so users can determine the exact nature of their relationship with each brand with utmost precision. They can decide which data a company is allowed to access and which information it cannot see. They can even let that brand know how often they want to be contacted, whether it’s once a day or once a week. Moreover, people can even earn money - up to 50% of the advertising spend a company pays to target them with ads. 

That last fact is what enables true decentralization, as until now advertising budgets have always gone directory into the pockets of the platform providers, whether that’s Facebook, Google, Twitter or someone else. 

Musk could theoretically work with Cardano and Profila to create a decentralized version of Twitter that gives users much more control and autonomy, with community consensus determining how the platform operates and what can and cannot be said on it. That would bring Musk much closer to his goal of implementing genuine freedom of speech on Twitter while leaving the community to decide how to tackle the problem of spam bots. 

Whether or not Musk will go for the more decentralized approach remains to be seen. In 2019, Twitter’s founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey mused the idea of greater decentralization of the platform himself, citing concerns over the growing demand for regulation. He too pointed to blockchain-based technology as a way to give users ownership of the platform and a say in its management. However Dorsey’s plans, which would have made it possible for companies and groups to create customized Twitter feeds, were never put into practice before he stepped down as the company’s CEO. 

Dorsey has since come out in support of Musk’s goal of creating a platform that is “maximally trusted and broadly inclusive” but only time will tell if its new owner intends to achieve that through decentralization. It could be argued that with Musk now in full control, Twitter has actually become more centralized than it was previously. However, there’s nothing to stop Musk giving up the control he has if he decides that doing so is for the greater good. 

Musk has in any case indicated that he’s willing to listen to the community, even his biggest critics, before deciding on how he intends to take Twitter forward. 

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