After agreeing to purchase Twitter Inc. for $44 billion, Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk has said that he won’t take this deal forward until he has been provided with accurate information about the spam and fake accounts. Musk said that the deal can’t be done unless Twitter proves its claim that less than 5% of its users’ accounts on the platform are fake. This comes, three weeks after the deal was announced publicly.
Elon Musk took this on Twitter to reply to a tweet that said that he may be looking for a better Twitter deal as $44 billion seems too high for 20% of fake accounts. Musk in the reply said that the number of bot accounts is four-time higher than what Twitter claims. He said that his offer was based on the information provided by the Twitter security filings.
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.
My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.
This deal cannot move forward until he does.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
Why Elon Musk is Suspicious About the Twitter Claims?
Let’s talk about spam. And let’s do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context…
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
The things started when, Parag Agrawal, CEO of Twitter, had written a thread last night in which he talked about the spam and fake accounts on the popular social media platform. The Twitter CEO had highlighted that their actual internal estimates for the fake accounts in the last four quarters were all well under 5%. Elon Musk’s reply didn’t go well and he doesn’t seem to be satisfied with the explanation by Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal. He says that the Twitter CEO wasn’t able to prove his claim about the spam accounts and because of this the deal cannot go forward. Musk further replied “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers of @twitter.
I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
Elon Musk Will Invite People to Analyse his Followers List
Elon Musk, on May 14, tweeted that his team will do a random sample of 100 followers of his Twitter account and he will invite more people to repeat the same process to get an estimated percentage.
To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers of @twitter.
I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
It can be clearly expected that there are many hurdles before the completion of the Elon Musk-Twitter deal and the accurate data about the spam account is one of them.
