The Elon Musk the owner of X, formally known as twitter has said that there will be a cleanup to rid the social media platform of bot accounts and trolls and that this has already begun and will lead to the suspension of several accounts.
Similarly, Musk stated that the company would not only suspend any account found to be bots but would also trace the owners and prosecute them. This is in response to complaints by users and advertisers that the social media platform is populated by bots, suggesting that the real human accounts are insignificant.
Bots are non-human users on X that do not need any supervision to perform actions such as liking posts of other users, reposting (formerly retweeting) tweets, following and unfollowing other accounts, and even sending direct messages.
Listen to Elon Musk
Announcing the actions on Thursday via a post on his twitter handle, Musk said:
- “System purge of bots & trolls underway. Please reply to me or @Xeng. if legitimate accounts are suspended.
- “X Corp will be tracing the people responsible and bringing the full force of the law to bear upon them.”
Musk who previously criticized the owner of Twitter for allowing bots and even accused the previous owners of patching up their numbers with bots before the acquisition of the company in 2022, has been celebrating the increasing number of users on X. However, increasing complaints about the activities of bots on the platform have pushed him to take action which may significantly reduce the numbers being celebrated.
