Twitter suspended 800 million accounts last year — so why does manipulation remain so rampant?

X, Elon Musk's social media site that many people (me included) still prefer to call Twitter, has told British MPs that it suspended 800 million accounts in 2024 for breaching its rules on platform manipulation and spam.

Appearing via video link before the foreign affairs committee, X's government affairs executive Wifredo Fernández said the platform was in a constant fight against state-backed interference.

And who was the most active manipulator of the site? Russia, followed by Iran and China.

Fernández told MPs that Russia had specifically attempted to undermine the 2024 US presidential election, "stoke division", and used a large number of accounts in an attempt to "flood the zone" with a "particular type of narrative."

The "massive" 800 million suspensions in 2024 covered accounts breaching X's rules on platform manipulation and spam, although the company declined to break down how many of those related specifically to interference by foreign powers.

When you consider that X has approximately 300 million monthly active users, it is quite staggering to think that it removed close to three times its entire active user base over the course of the year due to their accounts being inauthentic.

Fernández confirmed to MPs that manipulation attempts had not subsided, with "several hundred million accounts" having been taken down in just the latter part of 2024.

Ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter (which he rebranded as X), it has received significant criticism for its approach to content moderation, and how it can be manipulated to spread misinformation and amplify inflammatory false narratives.

Ironically, one of Musk's stated aims before acquiring Twitter for US $44 billion was to purge bots from the site, saying "we will defeat the spam bots or die trying."

Now, having purchased the site, Musk presides over a platform that, by its own admission, is plagued by hundreds of millions of fake accounts every year.

The problem does not seem to be going away, and the site's approach to handling the issue is raising concerns. For instance, last year, X attempted to sued the state of New York for daring to ask how it handles hate speech and misinformation is an unconstitutional burden. Meanwhile, X faced a criminal investigation in France over allegations that its algorithm was manipulated for the purposes of "foreign interference."

In the past, the European Commission has declared that X has the biggest proportion of disinformation of the six biggest social networks.

Social media has become the primary source of news for many people today, making it a key target for those who try to manipulate society on an industrialised scale. 800 million accounts may have been suspended on X, but one has to wonder how many remain uncaught.