Twitter Bot Concerns: How Many of Elon Musk’s 96.7 Million Twitter Followers Are Real?

Twitter Bot Concerns: How Many of Elon Musk’s 96.7 Million Twitter Followers Are Real?
Elon Musk's Twitter account with a Twitter logo in the background in Los Angeles, Calif., on May 13, 2022. Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images
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Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk’s war on Twitter Inc. bots is shaped by an extraordinary number of spam or autonomous agents that engage with him on the platform.

What Happened

Nearly 70 percent of Musk’s followers on Twitter are spam, fake or inactive, according to a Wall Street Journal report, which cited data from SparkToro LLC, a purveyor of audience-research software.

That compares with 41 percent for all other accounts that have between 65 million and 120 million followers, according to SparkToro.