Twitter admits that as many as 23 million of its active users are actually bots

Twitter raised eyebrows last month when it suggested that many of its active users aren’t actually human. Now we know how many.

In a new filing, the company said that “up to approximately 8.5%” of the accounts it considers active are automatically updated “without any discernible additional user-initiated action.” For instance, accounts like this one:

BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG—
Big Ben (@big_ben_clock) August 11, 2014

And this one:

A 5.2 magnitude earthquake occurred 70.84mi WNW of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. Details: eqbot.com/ayn Map: eqbot.com/ayh—
Earthquake Robot (@earthquakeBot) August 12, 2014

And this one:

America’s Got Talent (season 9) Wikipedia article edited anonymously from Google en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?di…—
  (@valleyedits) August 12, 2014

These bots amount to about 23 million of Twitter’s 271 million monthly active users (MAUs) at the end of June, according to the company.

The new disclosure was an attempt to clarify an earlier statement (pdf) that 14% of MAUs access the service outside of the official website and mobile apps, by using Twitter’s API. Twitter’s update today specifies that the 14% figure “included certain users who accessed Twitter through owned and operated applications.” Those are likely TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac, which are favored by power tweeters but, for technical reasons, aren’t counted in many of the company’s official statistics. The company said only 11% of MAUs accessed Twitter from applications that the company doesn’t own, like Tweetbot or Flipboard.

Those revisions allow us to deduce some previously unknown data:

• 8 million (3%) of Twitter’s MAUs use TweetDeck or Twitter for Mac.


• 7 million (2.5%) of Twitter’s MAUs use third-party clients.


• 23 million (8.5%) of Twitter’s MAUs are bots.

To be clear, the bots aren’t necessarily spam accounts, which according to Twitter make up less than 5% of MAUs. Bots can be useful, even essential, accounts for many Twitter users. But once they’re set up, they don’t usually have any humans behind them, which matters greatly to advertisers who are interested in reaching potential customers. And if advertisers are concerned, Twitter and its shareholders should be, too.

Twitter admits that as many as 23 million of its active users are actually bots