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Twitter denies report that 23 million users are not human

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In its latest quarterly report filed with the US Securities Exchange Commission, Twitter reveals that as many as 23 million, or 8.5% of its 271 million active monthly users reported in June, are people accessing its content via auto-pull users.A considerable media coverage published this morning saying the 8.5% figure refers to bots, accounts on Twitter that can churn out content automatically.But Twitter clarified that the term “bots” is mistakenly used in this case. What the report actually suggests is that among Twitter's massive user base, up to 8.5% of which are accounts that “can auto-pull content on behalf of users”.The amount of the auto-pull users among its active user base use third party applications that “may have automatically contacted our servers for regular updates without any discernable additional user-initiated action”, the report says.Nonetheless, they are not the only group that advertisers on Twitter can’t reach.In its original Q2 2014 Earnings Report, Twitter reportedly says add up to 14% of its accounts used third-party apps to access the platform, a group of users that also were not served with advertisings on Twitter.Soon after the report released, Twitter modified the number to 11% in the report after realising the 14% figure “included certain users who accessed Twitter through owned and operated applications”.Twitter declined to give comment, but an email reply via its PR agency said the 23 million figure has nothing to do with tweeting and everything to do with the consumption of content in a third-party app.Twitter also said there a number of false or spam accounts in existence on its platform."We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimated that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of our MAUs."Photo: Shutterstock

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