All eyes are on the developments of Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter. Recently, the Tesla CEO declared that the deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company gives clarity on the number of its fake or spam accounts. Elon Musk said that it should be fewer than 5% of total users.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal posted a long thread on the company’s policy of handling phony accounts and Elon Musk responded with a poop emoji. Well, let’s see what happens next.
Elon Musk Wants Proof Of Twitter’s Bot Numbers
Elon Musk is concerned about the presence of fake accounts on Twitter, due to which he has stated that the purchase deal “cannot move forward”. He estimated around 20% of Twitter accounts are phony. Musk also mentioned that the number could be even higher.
His tweet about the bot concern read, “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 announced that he and his team are conducting their own analysis on fake or spam accounts on Twitter. Explaining his methodology, he shared, “Any sensible random sampling process is fine. If many people independently get similar results for % of fake/spam/duplicate accounts, that will be telling. I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate.”
Also Read: US Government Starts Investigation Against Elon Musk For Irregularities In Twitter Deal
Elon Musk Reacts To Parag Agrawal’s Twitter Thread With Poop Emoji
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal addressed Elon Musk’s bot concerns in a long thread and defended the company’s handling of fake accounts. He started the thread with, “Let’s talk about spam.” Then he explained how millions of spam accounts are handled on a daily basis on Twitter. He also mentioned that despite the process, specific estimation of bots cannot be done externally.
“There are LOTS of details that are very important underneath this high-level description. We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you,” Parag Agrawal added.
Musk reacted to Parag Agrawal’s Twitter thread with a poop emoji.
After this, Elon also replied to the thread in a more professional manner.
Elon added that non-disclosure of bot data put Twitter at odds with Ad providers. He went on to say that Twitter should be more open with its policies as that would increase the trustworthiness of the platform. Let’s see how things unfold now.
