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As Parag Agrawal stands by Twitter spam estimates, Elon Musk's emoji response

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has spoken about the challenges of fighting spam on the social network. "Yous tin't build a ready of rules to detect spam today, and hope they will still work tomorrow," he said

May 17, 2022 / 08:11 AM IST

Elon Musk, who is in talks to acquire Twitter, has said he will conduct his own research to ascertain the actual number of spam accounts on the platform.

Elon Musk, who is in talks to acquire Twitter, has said he will conduct his own inquiry to ascertain the actual number of spam accounts on the platform.

Twitter Principal Executive Officer Parag Agrawal stood by the company's gauge that less than five percentage of its daily active users were "false or spam", every bit Elon Musk expressed doubts about information technology.

Elon Musk, whose deal to purchase Twitter is presently on concord, has said he will conduct his own enquiry to ascertain the actual number of spam accounts on the social network.

Let's talk nigh spam. And let'due south practice so with the benefit of information, facts, and context…

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

In a Twitter thread on May xvi, Parag Agrawal opposed the idea of an external guess of simulated accounts. Elon Musk disagreed with the comment, responding to it with a poo emoticon.

"We don't believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can't share)," Agrawal said. "Externally, it's not fifty-fifty possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs (monetisable daily agile Twitter users) on any given day.

Agarwal and so elaborated on the challenges of fighting spam.

"Spam isn't just 'binary' (human / not homo)," he added. "The most advanced spam campaigns use combinations of coordinated humans + automation. They also compromise real accounts, and and so use them to advance their entrada. So, they are sophisticated and difficult to catch."

The Twitter CEO said that because the "goals and tactics" of spam accounts are constantly evolving, fighting them becomes an incredibly dynamic process.

"You lot tin't build a set of rules to detect spam today, and hope they volition still work tomorrow. They will non," he added.

Appearances complicate the detection of fake business relationship, Agrawal added. "Many accounts which look fake superficially -- are really existent people," he said. "And some of the spam accounts which are actually the about dangerous -- and crusade the most harm to our users -- tin can wait totally legitimate on the surface."

Agrawal said Twitter'due south squad constantly removes spam from the platform while making sure the accounts of real people are non suspended inadvertently.

"Now, nosotros know nosotros aren't perfect at catching spam," he added. "So, this is why, subsequently all the spam removal I talked about above, we know some still slips through. We mensurate this internally. And every quarter, we have estimated that <5% of reported mDAU for the quarter are spam accounts."

The Twitter CEO added that the company's fake account estimates are based on multiple human reviews of thousands of randomly-sampled accounts

"Each human review is based on Twitter rules that define spam and platform manipulation, and uses both public and private data (eg, IP accost, phone number, geolocation, client/browser signatures, what the business relationship does when it'due south agile…) to make a decision on each account," he added.