Alt-Right Claims Twitter Purge, Potential Collateral Damage In Bot Wars

Twitter is a haven for trolls where users regularly display abusive behavior toward other users, companies, celebrity figures, or even ideas. In an attempt to stamp out these kinds of people, the platform has been implementing sweeping changes, which includes waging war on bots. Now, so-called alt-right users are claiming that Twitter was purging them of followers, many of which are suspected bots.

Among the buzzwords being thrown around by these account holders include “Twitter lockdown” and “purge,” indicating that the platform was quietly getting rid of their followers in an effort to silence them. Many of these complainants are known figures who harbor extremist views of the far-right variety such as anti-immigration sentiments and white supremacy, the Independent reports.

Regardless of the gravely offensive views that these people might have, however, it doesn’t appear that Twitter is intentionally trying to purge anyone of real followers. Instead, the site is simply trying to get rid of fake accounts or bots, which have proliferated on the site over the years.

This trend of garbage users latching onto certain ideologies has been a major problem for the platform. Not only do they make accounts pushing for extremist or fringe ideas seem legitimate where they would have been more obscure, bots also skew Twitter’s user data.

Having millions of users is only valuable if those users are actual humans. If they are bots, Twitter will have a major problem actually monetizing them.

On that note, it would seem that at least some legitimate users are also getting caught up in the bot wars. Several people have already reached out to Gizmodo, telling the publication that they were tagged by Twitter as exhibiting “automated behavior,” making them out to be bots. If this is the case, it seems the platform might need to tweak its algorithm a bit more to avoid inconveniencing human users.