Twitter deal cannot progress without proof on bot figures, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Inc., says his $44 billion Twitter deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company shows proof of its spam account figures.

He said this in a tweet on Tuesday.

In a filing earlier this month, Twitter estimated that fewer than 5 per cent of its monetisable daily active users in Q1 were bots or spam accounts.

But Musk claimed that around 20 per cent of the accounts on Twitter are fake or spam accounts — and he’s concerned that the number could be even higher.

“20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher,” the Tesla CEO tweeted in response to a report from Teslarati.

“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.”

20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.

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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

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“Seems like Twitter should welcome external validation if their claims are true,” Musk said in another tweet.

Seems like Twitter should welcome external validation if their claims are true

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

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On Monday, Parag Agrawal, Twitter CEO, posted a lengthy thread about spam on the microblogging platform.

Agrawal said that Twitter’s estimates of the proportion of spam accounts were based on “multiple human reviews (in replicate) of thousands of accounts”.

He said the company’s internal teams randomly sampled accounts the company considered “monetisable daily active users”.

Musk responded to Agrawal’s post with a smiling pop emoji.

Last week, Musk had said that his planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold”, pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform.