Without quoting a source, Musk tweeted that Twitter was a “20% fake / spam account” and suggested that Twitter’s documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission were misleading. The company said that less than 5% of its daily active users are spam accounts.
“My offer was based on the accuracy of Twitter documents in the SEC,” Musk tweeted. “Yesterday, the CEO of Twitter publicly refused to show evidence of <5%. This deal cannot go on until he does."
Musk’s latest tweet seems to have cast more doubt on the $ 44 billion deal. Musk said on Friday that it was “temporarily detained” but that he was “still committed to the acquisition”. This turnaround from Musk fueled speculation that the world’s richest man could use the bot debate to provide a better price for Twitter, either as a negotiation tactic or as needed.
Shares of Twitter fell 1.7% during pre-market trading on Tuesday. The stock has erased all gains in the weeks since Musk unveiled its stake in the company and is now trading at $ 36.80 a share – well below Musk’s offer price of $ 54.20 a share.
On Monday, he shared a series of tweets with Twitter CEO Parag Agraval about the spam account issue. Twitter (TWTR) stops “over half a million spam accounts every day,” Agraval writes. He also repeated the 5% statistic, saying the estimate was based on “multiple human surveys … of thousands of accounts” taken at random. Twitter has previously acknowledged that while it believes its estimates are “reasonable”, the measurements have not been independently verified and the actual number of fake or spam accounts may be higher. Agrawal’s original 13 tweets were met with a response from Musk that reflected the unusual and extremely online nature of the deal: emoji. Musk asked a slightly more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they get for their money?” Musk asked, “This is fundamental to Twitter’s financial health,” he added. Musk has repeatedly spoken out against bots and spam accounts on Twitter, once describing cryptocurrency spam bots as “the single most annoying problem on the platform.” Anyone familiar with the answers to Musk’s tweets knows that they are full of such scams, many of whom are trying to use Musk’s name.
“The problem with bots at the end of the day … seems more like the ‘dog ate homework’ excuse to drop the Twitter deal or talk about a lower price,” said Dan Ives and John Katsinris, Wedbush analysts. Securities, wrote in a note on Monday.
In his Twitter thread, Agraval said that most spam campaigns on Twitter use a combination of people and automation, instead of being driven mainly by bots. Understanding legitimate and fake accounts can be difficult, he said.
“The difficult challenge is that many accounts that look fake on the surface are actually real people,” he said. “And some of the spam accounts that are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – may seem perfectly legitimate on the surface.” Agraval said Twitter was in contact with Musk on the issue of spam.
“A week ago we shared an overview of the evaluation process with Elon and we look forward to continuing our conversation with him and all of you,” he added.
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