Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and Spacex CEO, has challenged Twitter’s CEO for a public discussion about the platform’s spam bots and fake accounts. Musk recently conducted a poll that found that almost 65% of respondents don’t believe less than 5% Twitter users are spam or fake.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk challenged Parag Agrawal, Twitter CEO, to a public discussion about fake and spam Twitter accounts. Musk tweeted Saturday, “Let him prove that Twitter has less then 5% fake or spam daily user.”
In the termination of his $44 billion bid for the social media platform, the Tesla CEO was concerned about the Twitter spam and fake accounts.
Twitter sued Musk to stop him from completing the buyout. The Spacex boss filed a countersuit accusing Twitter fraud.
Less than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2022
Musk ran a 24-hour Twitter survey Saturday asking his 103,000,000 followers whether they believe less than 5% are spam or fake Twitter users. 64.9% chose “no” from a total of 822 766 votes.
Twitter claims less than 5% are spam accounts. Musk disagrees and has been trying unsuccessfully to get data from the social media giant for his own analysis.
Musk explained “All indications point to the fact that many of Twitter’s public disclosures about its mDAUs were false or misleading…. The reported mDAU count includes a large number of spam and false accounts. This is far higher than 5%.”
Twitter defines mDAUs (“monetizable daily active user”) as “users who logged into and accessed Twitter on any day through Twitter.com and Twitter applications that can show ads.” Twitter’s disclosures also include those filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
SEC Filings – Materially False
Musk claims that Twitter gave him outdated data and offered a fake set of data. Then they provided a clean set of data where the malicious accounts were already suspended.
Saturday’s tweet by Tesla CEO:
If Twitter provides only their method for sampling 100 accounts and the verification of their authenticity, then the deal should be done on its original terms. If their SEC filings prove to be materially false, the deal should not proceed.
Musk stated in his countersuit, that just three days after signing the agreement to purchase Twitter, the company “restated” and publicly disclosed that the 2021 10-K mDAU figures were false and that Twitter had overcounted each quarter by as high as 1.9 million.
