I told myself I'd believe this if Rolling Stone actually talked to someone who'd worked on bots at Twitter. And they did. "Polls are more prone to manipulatio

I told myself I'd believe this if Rolling Stone actually talked to someone who'd worked on bots at Twitter. And they did. "Polls are more prone to manipulation than almost anything else [on Twitter]," he tells Rolling Stone. And yeah, the article notes Musk himself "suggested that as many as 20 percent of Twitter accounts could be fake and pledged that he would lead a crusade against bots which would 'succeed or die trying.'" My own personal theory - pure speculation here - is that Musk just personally wanted to reinstate accounts. And he knew enough about Twitter's bots to know that a Twitter poll would get him the bot-heavy result he wanted. (Rolling Stone even notes that Musk joked about "bot attacks" on one of his earlier polls -- so he's definitely aware of the possibility.) Rolling Stone writes: His attitude towards [polls] has changed as the results have affirmed his own preferences for how to run Twitter. When his Twitter polls indicated support to reinstate suspended accounts and bring back Trump, Musk sanctified with blurbs of Latin claiming “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” “I don’t think there’s anyone left to tell him [that the polls are basically bogus],” one former Twitter employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Rolling Stone. “The number of people who understand polls that are left – it’s basically zero....” Twitter’s polls, former staffers say, aren’t connected to tools like botmaker that can prevent spammy or inauthentic behavior.