Elon Musk Offers $1 Million Reward To Find Twitter 'Botnets' Culprits

Elon Musk has struck again! This time, the Twitter CEO appears to have offered a bounty to trace the source of "botnets" on the platform.

For the longest time, Elon Musk has spoken about Twitter's problems and has introduced sweeping changes to Twitter's verification programme, which he claims would eradicate its bot problem.

Reuters

$1 million bounty

Now, Musk seems to have offered a bounty $1 million to anyone who manages the find the source of "botnets" after Twitter made some of its algorithms open-source on Friday.

Who is behind these botnets?

Million dollar bounty if convicted.

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 2, 2023

What are botnets, you wonder? These are groups of computers that have been infected with malware and are constantly controlled by a single actor.

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When botnets take over several accounts, they are able to limit the reach of many accounts through mass blocking, unfollowing, and reporting.

"Who is behind these botnets? Million dollar bounty if convicted," Musk wrote on Twitter, after Steven Tey showed how Twitter Blue users get a boost on the platform in a thread analysing the code.

Twitter just open-sourced their algorithm.

Some initial takeaways:
¡ô Your following to follower ratio matters.
¡ô @TwitterBlue subscribers do get a boost in the algorithm.

Will keep adding more to this thread ?

¡ª Steven Tey (@steventey) March 31, 2023

In the same thread, Tey explained how the algorithm can often create "negative feedback loops" that would affect a user's "reputation score" based on reports of abuse or spam - alongside getting muted or blocked.

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In a Tweet, user el gato malo suggested to Elon Musk that a reputation score should be considered based on muting, blocking, and reporting emanating from verified accounts.

this is how the botnet/activist armies are crushing accounts

they block w/ 100k bots/add you to block lists.
follow then unfollow
mass report and mute.

and you're silenced.@elonmusk easy fix: only allow blue check mutes/blocks/reports to count.

ban blocklists https://t.co/GJjojIQfBP

¡ª el gato malo (@boriquagato) April 1, 2023

Besides this, the release of Twitter's open source code has whipped up some interesting insights. For starters, Jane Wong highlighted how Twitter's algorithm specifically labels Musk's tweets, in addition to labelling celebrities like Katy Perry, Barack Obama, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey as "testing accounts."

Twitter¡¯s algorithm specifically labels whether the Tweet author is Elon Musk

¡°author_is_elon¡±

besides the Democrat, Republican and ¡°Power User¡± labelshttps://t.co/fhpBjdfifX pic.twitter.com/orCPvfMTb9

¡ª Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 31, 2023

Part of Twitter¡¯s algorithm specifically designates Jack Dorsey, Katy Perry, Stephen Curry and Barack Obama as ¡°testing accounts¡± for getting random Tweets for testing,

with an emphasis on Katy Perry in particularhttps://t.co/X0z8WQc4R4 pic.twitter.com/0GfzqnFG2e

¡ª Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 31, 2023

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