Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California (right)
Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton (R) announced Monday that his office was launching a civil investigation into Twitter over allegations that the tech company is misrepresenting the number of bot accounts that make up the total number of users on its social media platform.
The request comes by way of a formal civil investigative demand letter under the authority of a statute authorizing attorney general investigations to protect Texas consumers and businesses.
“Texans rely on Twitter’s public statements that nearly all of its users are real people,” the attorney general said in a press release. “This matters not only to regular Twitter users, but also to Texas businesses and advertisers who use Twitter for a living. If Twitter is misrepresenting how many accounts are fake to increase their revenue, I have a duty to protect Texans.
Twitter bots come in all shapes and sizes, but share some key characteristics. They are all automated forms of low-level artificial intelligence that can and do send tweets, follow other users, and generally interact on Twitter like actual human beings. Many of the platform’s most popular accounts are robots that are used for certain functions and identify themselves as non-human – or at least perform tasks that indicate they are not human. Other bots, the vast majority, effectively pretend to be real users and are considered a form of spam.
Spam bot accounts create follower accounts to make certain users appear much more popular than they really are, by amassing commenters who use keywords during controversial news cycles and have been used to artificially help trending topics.
Twitter has not been charged with a crime. Nor has a civil suit actually been filed. Rather, Texas is seeking documents based on the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a consumer protection law. The DTPA was once one of the nation’s most vibrant consumer protection statutes before it was significantly weakened by the GOP-controlled state legislature after heavy lobbying by the insurance industry in 2017.
“This civil investigative request is relevant to the scope of an investigation into possible violations of sections 17.46(a) and (b) of the DTPA in false, misleading or deceptive representations of Twitter users and advertising audiences,” the CID released . from Paxton’s office says.
Under the relevant section of Lone Star State law, Paxton is seeking a wide range of documents spanning 23 categories.
These requests include documents showing: “number of monthly active Twitter users for each month from 2017 to present”, “highest number of daily active Twitter users for each month from 2017 to present”, “Avg. of Twitter”. monetized daily active users for each month from 2017 to present”, “number of monthly active Twitter users in Texas for each month from 2017 to present”, “number of Inauthentic Twitter Accounts for each month from 2017 to present, broken down by inauthentic account category (ie, fake account, spammer account, and bot account), if available, and “amount of revenue generated by Twitter (by year) for setting ad targeting People in Texas Twitter has been using Twitter advertising since 2017.
The state also requires that “[a]Public statements you made about the number of Twitter users, including but not limited to statements made or caused to regulators, the media, advertisers, and on your website and/or blog during the period from January 1 , 2017, to date.”
The request from Texas’ top law enforcement official comes amid a high-profile standoff between Twitter and Elon Muskwho has said his much-talked about takeover bid for the company was put on hold due to for concerns that the number of bot accounts was incorrectly stated.
Paxton’s press release makes an assessment of this dispute without naming the Tesla CEO.
“Twitter has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks over claims in its financial regulatory filings that less than 5% of all users are bots, when in fact they may be as high as 20% or more,” the office said. of the Attorney General. “The difference could dramatically affect the cost to Texas consumers and businesses that transact with Twitter.”
[images: Twitter HQ via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images; Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton via Brandon Bell/Getty Images]
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