A small network of suspected bots, comprising just 45 X accounts, is spreading racism, sexualised abuse and disinformation to millions of people online.

From May 22 until July 4 this year, in the lead-up to the British general election, the 45 accounts produced around 440,000 posts that generated over three billion impressions on the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.

The accounts then shifted to other events — like anti-migrant protests in Ireland and the United States election — to amplify racism and generate disinformation and conspiracy theories through 170,000 posts with 1.3 billion impressions, according to Global Witness.

Ava Lee, campaign leader of digital threats at Global Witness, said that the bots frequently responded with hate and conspiracy theories.

“Access to timely, accurate and reliable information is crucial for all democracies,” she said.

“It’s needed now more than ever in the run-up to the US presidential election.”

The network of bots managed to have their content shared and reposted by media personalities with more than 250,000 followers on several occasions and the research found that the accounts generally supported Reform UK and other conservative political parties.

Bot problem

Global Witness flagged accounts that raised several red flags based on criteria including an inhuman amount of activity, accounts using default names and a manual review.

The bot accounts often interacted with each other with replies and reposts, suggesting there could be “deliberate co-ordination”.

When Elon Musk purchased the platform, he promised to solve the bot problem, including by “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system” to combat “vast armies of bots”.

Elon Musk promised to solve Twitter’s bot problem, but it has become worse. Photo: Getty

His decision to monetise engagement on the platform has created a large number of accounts on the platform that repost, steal content and spam pornographic images and links for engagement.

Lee called on Musk to hold the accounts to X’s terms of service – at the very least.

“In light of our findings, we are calling on X to increase its moderation efforts and get better at enforcing its own policies against inauthentic activity,” Lee said.

“We’re relying on them to protect our democracies from interference.”

Disinformation

Since Musk’s takeover, X has become a site of disinformation and graphic content, and the platform’s refusal to remove content brought it into conflict with the Australian government earlier this year.

Social media has proved to be a powerful spreader of harmful ideology and a powerful weapon of mass propaganda.

Anecdotally, X’s algorithm, since Musk twisted Twitter into his own image, has increased the amount of right-wing content, like anti-transgender rights activism and ‘anti-wokeness’, visible in people’s feeds.

Musk has embraced this change; he has endorsed Donald Trump ahead of the United States election in November and he has claimed that “the woke mind virus” ‘killed’ his male-to-female transgender child.

“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that,” Musk said.

“And we’re making some progress.”

No progress, however, on that bot problem.