May 17 (Reuters) – Elon Musk said on Tuesday that his $ 44 billion bid would not continue until Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) showed evidence that spam bots accounted for less than 5% of total users, hours after assuming that he could look for a lower price for the company.
“My proposal is based on the accuracy of Twitter documents for the SEC. Yesterday, the CEO of Twitter publicly refused to show evidence of <5% (spam accounts). This deal cannot continue until he does," he said. Musk in a tweet.
After putting his offer on hold last week in anticipation of spam account information, Musk said he suspected they made up at least 20% of users – compared to official Twitter estimates of 5%.
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“You can’t pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claim,” he told the All-In Summit 2022 in Miami on Monday.
Asked if the Twitter deal was viable at a different cost, Musk told the conference: “I mean, it’s not out of the question. The more questions I ask, the more my worries grow.”
“They claim to have this complex methodology that only they can understand … It can’t be some deep mystery that is more complex than the human soul or anything like that.”
Shares fell more than 8% to $ 37.39 on Monday, down from the day before Musk revealed its stake in Twitter in early April, casting doubt on the billionaire entrepreneur’s continued acquisition at the agreed price.
Twitter CEO Parag Agraval tweeted Monday that internal ratings for spam accounts on the social media platform over the past four quarters were “well below 5%” in response to days of criticism from Musk about the company’s work with fake accounts .
Twitter’s assessment, which has remained the same since 2013, cannot be reproduced externally, given the need to use both public and personal information to determine if an account is spam, Agraval said.
Musk responded to Agrawal’s defense of the emoji methodology. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” This is essential for Twitter’s financial health, “he wrote.
Musk has promised to change Twitter’s content moderation practices, criticizing decisions such as banning former President Donald Trump as overly aggressive, while promising to fight “spam bots.” Read more
Musk called for random samples to be tested by Twitter users to identify bots. He said that “there is a chance that over 90% of active users are daily.”
Independent researchers have estimated that between 9% and 15% of millions of Twitter accounts are bots. Spam bots or fake accounts are designed to manipulate or artificially increase activity on social media platforms such as Twitter. Read more
Currently, Twitter does not require users to register using their real identity and explicitly allows automated, parody and alias profiles.
It does prohibit impersonation and spamming, and penalizes accounts when it determines that its purpose is to “deceive or manipulate others” by engaging in fraud, coordinating abuse campaigns, or artificially boosting engagement.
Musk’s comments to a private audience may contribute to concerns about his disclosure of information about market movements.
Musk, known for his candid Twitter posts, has a long history of fighting with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. A U.S. judge recently accused him of trying to evade an agreement with the SEC that required oversight of his Tesla tweets.
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Report by Katie Paul and Hyunju Jin in San Francisco and Crystal Hu in New York; and Shubham Kaliya in Bengaluru Edited by Kenneth Lee, Matthew Lewis, Bernard Orr and Aditi Sony
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