Tesla CEO Elon Musk has vowed to defeat Twitter’s spambots if his bid to take over the company succeeds.
Musk tweeted that he will “die trying” in his aim to “authenticate all real humans” on the platform.
This is not the first time Musk has voiced his concerns over Twitter spambots. The Tesla and SpaceX chief told a recent Ted conference in Vancouver that scambots make the “product much worse,” adding if he had a Dogecoin for every crypto scam he saw on Twitter, he would have 100 billion Dogecoin.
In response, British cryptographer and Blockstream CEO Adam Back has argued that Musk’s suggestion to fight bots by authenticating real humans would be “bad for privacy.” He added that Musk should take Michael Saylor’s advice on how to tackle the spambots.
“Twitter can solve the problem of scammers & spambots if they allow real humans to post ~50,000 sats ($20) via Lightning & get verified w/an Orange Check,” the MicroStrategy CEO suggested.
There are close to 360,000 verified accounts with blue ticks at the moment. Therefore, by allowing hundreds of millions of orange ticks, every user could be verified within minutes, Saylor proposed.
“Then we can limit comments/DMs to verified accounts. Bad actors forfeit their security deposit & @Twitter monetizes malice.”
Last week, Elon Musk revealed his controversial $43 billion offer to buy Twitter in order to facilitate “free speech” on the platform. His bid came days after he turned down a seat on the company’s board.
Musk criticized by Schwartz
However, David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, has criticized the billionaire’s intentions, claiming that Musk is “not trying to make Twitter a better place.”
“He’s trying to push Twitter’s moderation policy to give better treatment to political speech he favors and to give worse treatment to political speech he disfavors,” he said.
Musk is currently Twitter’s second-biggest individual shareholder. He was surpassed by the Vanguard Group less than 24 hours after announcing his takeover bid.