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Elon Musk has put his planned acquisition of Twitter on hold because he claims the company is undercounting the percentage of spambots on the microblogging platform. The company says its estimate is less than 5%. Setting aside the question of Musk’s motivation for raising the issue, the dispute seems straightforward: What is the prevalence of bots on Twitter?
But the reality is considerably murkier. Are all bots spammers? Is most spam and misinformation generated by bots? Are most bots fake accounts, and vice versa?
Kai-Cheng Yang and Filippo Menczer of Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media unpack the murk and what’s involved in estimating bot prevalence. They also explain why even asking the question is less than helpful.
Also today:
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Yes, worry about Twitter, but don’t worry whether there are hordes of spambots running rampant there.
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Kai-Cheng Yang, Indiana University; Filippo Menczer, Indiana University
Elon Musk’s focus on the number of bots on Twitter, whether genuine or a distraction, does little to address the problems of misinformation and spam. A pair of social media experts explain why.
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Politics + Society
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Meredith Oyen, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Biden’s suggestion that the US is prepared to intervene militarily if Taiwan was invaded was quickly walked back by White House officials.
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Mark A. Grey, University of Northern Iowa
Putin has a history of forcing civilians to migrate during a conflict, part of a broader strategy to overwhelm other countries with new refugees and destabilize their economies.
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Ethics + Religion
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Joseph P. Laycock, Texas State University
In the 1960s, the Catholic Church sought to downplay demonic possession, but its views since then have changed.
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Samira Mehta, University of Colorado Boulder
Conservative Christians have cheered restrictions on some birth control. But many decades ago, Christian leaders’ support helped contraceptives become acceptable in the first place.
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Health + Medicine
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Lauren Owens, University of Michigan; Claire Brindis, University of California, San Francisco; Daniel Grossman, University of California, San Francisco
Three experts answer questions about the effectiveness, safety and side effects of medication abortion.
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Christina Polomoff, University of Connecticut
Studying medication use in a traumatized population of immigrants required pharmacists to listen to and learn from trusted community health workers.
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Economy + Business
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Matthew E. Kahn, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Human behaviors shift. Policies change. New technology arrives and evolves. All those changes and more are hard to predict, and they affect tomorrow’s costs.
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Science + Technology
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Artemis Spyrou, Michigan State University; Dennis Mücher, University of Guelph
Nuclear isomers are rare versions of elements with properties that mystified physicists when first discovered. Isomers are now used in medicine and astronomy, and researchers are set to discover thousands more of them.
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Samuel Zamora, Instituto Geológico y Minero de España (IGME - CSIC)
The discovery of a unique 510 million-year-old fossil in a Pennsylvania churchyard offers new clues into how early life evolved on Earth.
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