Millions of Twitter Accounts Are Bots; Looking to Musk to Fix the World

Posted March 14th, 2017 at 9:38 am (UTC-4)
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Today’s Tech Sightings

FILE - A picture illustration shows a 3-D-printed Twitter logo through broken glass. (Reuters)

FILE – A picture illustration shows a 3-D-printed Twitter logo through broken glass. (Reuters)

Study: Up to 48 Million Twitter Accounts Are Bots

Twitter, according to a joint study released by the University of Southern California and Indiana University, has more than 48 million bot accounts – and some of them could be among your followers.  Twitter has about 319 million active monthly users. The study found that between 9 and 15 percent of those are bots. Writer Dan Tynan offers some tips to help you identify Twitter bots.

Tech Giants Join Google to Fight Order to Hand Over Foreign Emails

Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Cisco have all come to Google’s aid after a Pennsylvania court ordered it to hand over emails stored overseas to the FBI. In an amicus brief, the tech firms argued that the FBI warrant seeking emails stored abroad is an invasion of privacy outside the borders of the United States and invites other countries to do the same. Google had vowed it would fight the order. It’s not clear what type of data the court order requires.

Musk’s Pledge to Fix South Australia’s Energy Issues Attracts Other Countries

A few days ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged to solve South Australia’s energy crisis within 100 days or he will do it for free. Storms have left the Australian state with severe outages and its power companies scrambling to meet demand. To address the issue, Tesla would install a 100 megawatt battery storage system. Soon after the pledge was made, other interested parties in Ukraine, New Zealand and other countries contacted Musk for more details.

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Aida Akl
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.

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