Communications Major

Of Twitter's 284 million users, 24 million are just machines — apps or pieces of software — that ping Twitter's platform automatically "with no discernable user action involved," according to the company's disclosures to the SEC.

The fact that 8.5% of Twitter's "users" are not actually doing anything on the platform might be a problem.

Whoever said, “Money can’t buy you friends,” clearly hasn’t been on the Internet recently.

By using social media bots, celebrities, politicians and others can falsely inflate the number of friends and followers they have, possibly swaying public opinion about a new song — or a policy position.

Twitter has released updated figures on how many of its users are automated, saying about 20 million accounts are probably bots of some form or another — but there is an upside to that number.