Twitter deal cannot move forward until it proves less than 5 percent accounts are bots: Elon Musk
Experts believe that Musk is trying to renegotiate the deal at a lower price. This can be corroborated by the fact that Musk said earlier this week that a viable deal at a lower price wouldn’t be “out of the question.”
Elon Musk Twitter deal on hold
After acquiring an initial 9.2 percent stake in Twitter in April and then offering to buy it for $44 billion, all within a span of one month, Musk announced last week that he was temporarily putting the deal on hold. He quoted a Reuters report on Twitter’s internal evaluation of fake accounts and said he would like to see the company’s calculations. He later commented that he was still “committed to the acquisition.”
In its filings, Twitter said that the calculations about the number of false or spam accounts were an “estimate,” and that the real number “could be higher than we have estimated.” Notably, Twitter had earlier revealed that it had miscounted its Daily Active Users for three years straight from Q1 2019 to Q4 2021. Twitter had earlier miscounted its DAU in 2017 too.
We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated.
— Twitter Filing
At a conference in Miami on Monday, Musk said, “Currently what I’m being told is that there’s just no way to know the number of bots. It’s like, as unknowable as the human soul.” Musk had earlier tweeted on May 14 that his team would conduct a random sampling of 100 followers of Twitter’s official account on the microblogging site to find out the number of bots. Shortly after, Musk claimed that Twitter’s legal team complained that he had violated their agreement by publicly sharing the company’s methodology.
Elon Musk – Twitter CEO public spat
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, in a series of tweets on Monday, claimed that it was not possible to conduct an external examination of the bot numbers since understanding which accounts would be included as Daily Active Users of Twitter would require private information, which the company can’t share. Musk’s reply to Agrawal’s explanation was a single poop emoji.
In his thread, Agrawal added that Twitter manually checks thousands of accounts every quarter to determine how many should be counted as spam. To this, Elon Musk replied, “So why don’t you just call them?” Agrawal also mentioned that Twitter had “shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago.”
If Musk suspends the deal, he will be required to pay Twitter a $1 billion termination fee, besides additional litigation due to damages. Musk has emphasised that he intends changing Twitter’s model from relying on advertising fees to nominal subscription charges. He has also reiterated time and again that Twitter should be a platform for “free speech.”
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