Musk Doubts On Spam Accounts May Hit Deal
Financial Express Mumbai|May 18, 2022
$44-Billion twitter acquisition
Musk Doubts On Spam Accounts May Hit Deal

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter can't move forward unless the company shows public proof that less than 5% of the accounts on the social media platform are fake or spam.

Musk made the comment in a reply to another user on Twitter early Tuesday. He spent much of the previous day in a back and-forth with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company's effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.

In his tweet on Tuesday, Musk said that “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.” He added: “Yesterday, Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof of 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”Twitter declined to comment.

It's Musk's latest salvo over inauthentic accounts, a problem he has said he wants to rid Twitter of.

At a Miami technology conference on Monday, Musk estimated that at least 20% of Twitter's 229 million accounts are spambots, a percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment.

The battle over spam accounts kicked off last week when Musk tweeted that the Twitter deal was on hold pending confirmation of the company's estimates that they make up less than 5% of total users.

Also at the All In Summit, Musk gave the strongest hint yet that he would like to pay less for Twitter than the $44 billion offer he made last month.

This story is from the May 18, 2022 edition of Financial Express Mumbai.

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This story is from the May 18, 2022 edition of Financial Express Mumbai.

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