Abstract

https://www. wsj. com/articles/twitter-built-on-anonymity-finds-it-to-be-a-liability-1506945601? mg= prod/accounts-wsj 2/3 during the last month of the presidential campaign were generated by bots, according to a research paper by Emilio Ferrara, an assistant research professor with the University of Southern California. There were 400,000 bots sending political messages during the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Ferrara added.
Twitter says that some bots can be a problem. Since June, Twitter has detected an average of 130,000 accounts a day attempting to manipulate trending topics, and the company says it has taken steps to prevent the impact by identifying and suspending them. Twitter estimates that spam accounts represent fewer than 5% of its 328 million monthly users. Sam Woolley, a University of Oxford research associate who studies the role of political bots on social media, says that the number could be as high as 20%.

Date

March 11, 2026

Authors

Georgia Wells, Robert McMillan

Journal

The Wall Street Journal