Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, has offered a $1 million bounty to anyone who can identify the source of “botnets” that have been allegedly targeting reputation scores on the platform.
This comes after Twitter made some of its algorithms open-source on Friday, revealing some interesting quirks. Steven Tey shared his analysis of the information on Twitter, concluding that Twitter Blue is boosted in the algorithm. However, he added that the algorithm was prone to creating “negative feedback loops” that could reduce a user’s “reputation score.”
User el gato malo alleged that this is how “botnets” were able to hurt the reach of certain accounts. The release of Twitter’s open-source algorithm also revealed that Twitter specifically labels tweets by Musk and other major figures as “testing accounts.”
According to cybersecurity company Cloudflare, a botnet refers to a group of computers infected with malware and controlled by a single actor. By taking control of several accounts, botnets can suppress certain accounts by mass blocking, unfollowing, and reporting them.
The user suggested to Musk that only the muting, blocking, and reporting activity of verified accounts should count towards a “reputation score.”
Musk plans to increase the amplification of tweets from verified accounts, aiming to boost subscriptions to Twitter Blue and revenues. He plans to allow only the tweets of verified accounts and those users follow on the For You feed. “Legacy verified accounts,” those verified by Twitter before Musk’s takeover for free, will begin to lose their verification marks this weekend, according to Twitter.
However, some celebrities have voiced their opposition to paying for checkmarks, as have news outlets including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Insider.