Elon Musk slams Twitter, Google for rising scams, fake bots

Reuters photo

New Delhi: Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Sunday slammed Twitter and Google for the rise in trolling networks and scams via fake bots on both the platforms. In a series of tweets, Musk said that desperate times call for desperate measures.

"The crypto scam level on Twitter is reaching new levels. This is not cool," Musk reacted to a follower`s tweet.

"Report as soon as you see it. Troll/bot networks on Twitter are a *dire* problem for adversely affecting public discourse and ripping people off," he continued.

He also criticised Google for allowing scammers to flourish. "Trolls/bots just need to be deemphasized relative to probable real people who aren`t being paid to push an agenda or scam. Google still shows bs/scam pages, they`re just several clicks away," Musk stressed.

He said that though Google applied the citation relevance principle aka PageRank, among many other things, "the safest place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google search results!"

PageRank is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. PageRank was named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google.

Musk`s tweets led to a flood of reactions on social media. Some even suggested him to start his own social media platform.

"Even verified accounts are now being hacked and pushing fake bitcoin scams, that have us included in the fake screenshots, Jesus christ," tweeted Niche Gamer.

"I`ve been reporting hundreds of scammers in 1.5 years but @Twitter has to get rid of them once and for all. They`re getting more and more clever, though... with these fake screenshots," tweeted another user.

Scammers have time and again abused Musk`s popularity to fleece Twitter users after hacking several popular accounts.

The hackers used Musk`s name and likeness to ask for Bitcoin -- a cryptocurrency -- by promoting an ad on Twitter in 2018.

Despite Twitter attempting to ban scammers and impersonators on its platform, one impersonator broke into Musk`s official account with a fake lookalike verified account, promising his 22.5 million followers free Bitcoin and ethereum cryptocurrencies.