said 21 Apr 2022
If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
— Elon Musk, primary source
Tweeted during the acquisition bid, before the deal closed on 27 October 2022. During the acquisition dispute he estimated fake accounts at roughly 20% of the platform; Twitter's official figure was under 5%. The vow named no date.
What happened: Neither has happened. Independent 2025-2026 estimates put bots at 9-15% of all accounts, rising to 15-44% in political conversations, and a peer-reviewed study of his tenure as CEO found no substantial change in the concentration of inauthentic accounts. X's own actions concede the war continues: its head of product announced the removal of 1.7 million reply-flooding bots in October 2025, then a fresh crackdown in February 2026, with the search codebase rewritten because it was "getting hammered by AI agents."
no deadline
Tweet, Apr 21 2022 · archived