Tweetbots vs. Elon Musk

Spamming. Scamming. Lying. There is no end to their deceit, division, and deception. Nobody likes them, and nobody wants to be around them. As soon as you hear about Twitter bots, the first thing that comes to mind is the malicious image that is associated with them.   

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However, they are more than that. Twitter bots contain a multitude of features. They provide information. They are entertaining. In addition to making us smarter, they also make us smile. Natural disaster alerts, like those posted by @EarthquakeBot, can serve as a public service. It can be a guilty pleasure when they share adorable pictures of animals, like @PossumEveryHour. These bizarrely charming automated robots provide more value than most human-run accounts. 

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“Who doesn't love a few robots that promise not to rise against us? ” even Twitter asked.

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It turns out to be Elon Musk.

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Twitter has been engaged in a strange battle over the future of bots under Musk's control - a case study in business strategy.

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Twitter suddenly announced two weeks ago that it would begin charging developers for access to the systems they need to run their bots, which is like asking people to pay for oxygen. Even the friendly bots designed to share interesting and useful information with the user would be governed by the policy. However, since Elon Musk is an extremely hardcore Twitter user, it didn't last long due to its extremely hardcore nature. The uproar generated by what appeared to be blatant cash grabs was so great that the company abruptly reversed course and spared the bots from being destroyed. 

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In the chaotic months since Mr. Musk has taken over Twitter, Twitter has been marked by slapdash rollouts and subsequent whiplash that have characterized Twitter in the chaotic months since Mr. Musk has taken over Twitter.

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After shelling out $44 billion to acquire Twitter, he wrote, "Please note that Twitter will do a lot of dumb things in the coming months." He added, "We'll keep what works and make changes to what doesn't." 

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Make lots of dumb decisions, keep what works, and change what doesn't. 

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An organizing principle for the world's most volatile and overworked billionaire can be found in this statement.

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Musk has never been like most executives, who prefer not to do foolish things. As advertisers are disappearing, revenues are down, and debt payments are due, Twitter's business decisions are often impetuous and based on whims, including recent algorithmic tweaks that are intended to boost engagement. It seems like Mr. Musk believes that even the ones that fail are necessary for his company's success. Some might call these glitches the classic tinkering of a brilliant entrepreneur, while others may call them dumb.

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We are now back to the bot crackdown that failed. 

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Depending on who you ask, a bot can mean different things. There are many definitions and interpretations of the overly broad term, which only adds to the confusion. People and porcupines are both mammals, so they are the same. 

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As Musk pointed out when he said his company was "being abused desperately right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators", he was referring to the malevolent kind, and he suggested a $100 monthly paywall as a means of deterring them. A pitch like this did not go over well with users, who are fiercely protective of their benign robotic friends, who went on to berate the company in defense of accounts like @FrogandToadbot, which tweets quotes and photos from illustrated children’s books eight times a day, to defend their benign robotic friends. The company then amended its rules again in response to an uprising that he described as "feedback," with a promise to keep a basic version of its free API available for "bots that create good content at no charge," as Mr. Musk opaquely described it.

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A request for comment was not responded to by Twitter.

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In spite of that, the whole mess has already been revealing-and not just because it explains Mr. Musk's behavior and not just for the sake of explaining it.

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Humans also seem to desire bot companionship in the latest mayhem on Twitter.

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These bots come in many varieties. There are some that chronicle seismic activity. There are others who spark joy. There is one who tweets every hour with photos of possums. By analyzing crude data and cleaning it up for public consumption, they automatically post it to Twitter in a digestible format. The translation is what bots do. In other words, they take information from one language and translate it into a different language. 

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The bots that post about earthquakes, possums, and Frog and Toad were not created with the intention of "doing bad things," as Mr. Musk describes their evil cousins to be. The fake accounts he vowed to purge when he bought the business are not trolls spewing propaganda, spammers yammering about crypto, or the trolls spewing propaganda that he previously vowed to purge.

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In fact, some of these accounts have been described as good bots by Twitter's former executives as well as its current chief twerp.

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Like Bill Snitzer's bots, they are automated programs. 

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During a minor earthquake in 2009, Mr. Snitzer felt the urge to check Twitter in an effort to find out what was happening. He is a software developer from Los Angeles. Having experienced it himself, he was eager to find out from others if they had experienced it as well. It was then that he was inspired to do so. 

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“You know what would be cool?” he remembered thinking. “If I just made a bot that tweeted when there’s an earthquake.” 

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As a result, he did. In order to achieve this, he wrote a script that runs around the clock and does a simple task: Whenever it notices something in the U.S. Geological Survey data, it will post a tweet on Twitter with information about the magnitude, location, and time of the earthquake. Using the bots, we are able to distill down the information to what we need to know,” he explained.

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Several tweets sent by Earthquake Robot, the Twitter bot Mr. Snitzer programmed for the sole purpose of alerting the public to powerful earthquakes, confirmed the devastation in Turkey. There are also four bots that he built to monitor Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of which will only send out tweets about big earthquakes and two that will send out tweets about every quake, including a 1.3 in Malibu and a 2.0 in Berkeley, barely noticeable tremors that make people look at their smartphones to make sure they do not go crazy. 

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It wasn't just that Mr. Snitzer's earthquake bots were cool. There was a great deal of use and popularity for them. The two of them have a combined following of over 800,000. 

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Having announced that Twitter will charge an unspecified amount to keep his bots alive in the first place, then saying never mind, then delaying the unveiling of a new API platform and asking developers for their patience in a dizzying series of events, Mr. Snitzer was unsure what to do next.

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There were two things that the bot maker, who found himself at the mercy of Mr. Musk, was certain of. As a matter of fact, he was insulted in the first place. In his opinion, it was not appropriate for him to have to spend money to maintain something that so many Twitter users find invaluable, especially one that costs him so much money. Secondly, he was conflicted about what to do. As much as he did not want to pay Mr. Musk, he also did not want to kill the bots he had created.

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According to the company, most good bots are capable of tweeting 1,500 times a month, which should be enough for hourly possums and Mr. Snitzer's accounts. There are much bigger problems facing the world if a bot only tweets about big earthquakes exceeding that limit. 

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The good bots of Twitter continue to exist while developers like Mr. Snitzer wait for clarity on the Twitter platform. At least for the time being. It is hoped that this will continue for a long time to come. In fact, they are what makes the product so enjoyable to use, and reflect the type of ingenuity that Mr. Musk should be encouraging, not banning when it comes to his products. 

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As it turns out, Mr. Musk is the target audience for Mr. Snitzer's earthquake bots: He is frequently in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and he is very active on Twitter.

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His behavior is different from theirs. It might be a good idea for him to change that as well.