“How many real people are still on the Internet?” Elon Musk posted a tweet that quickly went viral. The Tesla and X CEO was responding to entrepreneur Mario Nawfal, who highlighted a concerning statistic which states that over half of all web traffic is now driven by bots.
Nawfal was referring to a Straits Times article which showed that malicious bots were behind nearly half of web traffic in Singapore, according to a study by the ‘2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report’. The report compared bot traffic between 2023 and 2024, and found bad bots to be most prevalent in the gambling, gaming, automotive and travel sectors.
Globally, automated bot traffic surpassed the human-generated type for the first time in a decade, constituting 51% of all web traffic in 2024, according to the study.
As AI becomes more sophisticated and accessible, bots are increasingly indistinguishable from human users.
Mawfal mentions what these bots are up to no good— stealing passwords, crashing sites, faking clicks, and even pretending to be human. He also taunted humans about the so-called takeover, saying ‘Meanwhile, you’re still solving CAPTCHAs.’
The implications are far-reaching. News feeds, comment sections, social media platforms, and e-commerce sites are all affected. Musk’s rhetorical question touches on a growing unease in the digital age. For now, it seems like the bots are winning.
