In a program on CNBC, Nick Bilton of The New York Times said that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) are facing the biggest problem in the form of robots, which are being used by millions of users to generate tweets, fake likes, get fake friends and other forms of criminal activity. Bilton said that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has around 114 million bots. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) on the other hand has around 8% of its users in the form of bots. He said that thousands of people are using fake entries and bots to make money online. They also post automatic content, connected tweets and retweets. Bilton also pointed out that many celebrities are using bots to get advertising deals around the social media.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) have announced many projects to fight bots in the past. Bots are not only harmful for their social media traffic, they also pose a legitimate threat to the user security and data integrity. Bilton claimed that he has created 30 bots for fake social media likes and friendships as a test case. He said that he could create 30,000 more bots within hours despite of the fact that he is not a programmer or hacker. The real problem Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) are facing is the ease with which people can make fake accounts. Social media companies are unable to craft a method to block the bots. Two way verification, phone number identification are conventional methods which have been cracked by hackers.
Bilton said that children in their bedroom can run bot forums and communities to sell fake Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) likes and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s followers to people. Bilton was flummoxed on why Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) are unable to tackle this problem.
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