Billionaire Elon Musk, who pledged to eliminate Twitter the “spam bots”, has now argued, through this social network, that these automated accounts may exist in a higher number than expected, making the purchase agreement unfeasible.
The world's richest man's recent about-face over the purchase of the social network has been controversial and, according to some analysts, meaningless, other than an attempt to lower the value of Twitter or to renegotiate the deal that, according to experts, it's getting more and more expensive for Tesla's CEO.
The founder of Tesla recently pushed investors to the limit by announcing that he was temporarily suspending the purchase of the platform – which he had announced for almost 44.000 million dollars -, only to later rectify this information and indicate that he remained committed to its acquisition.
"This is the strategy you are trying to use as a way to get away [from the deal] or to get a lower price,” said Brian Quinn, associate professor of law at Boston College.
Musk used Twitter, this Tuesday, to say that the agreement reached to buy the company cannot “advance” unless the social network shows public evidence that less than 5% of accounts on this platform are fake or 'spam'.
Experts say Muks cannot unilaterally suspend the deal, although that hasn't stopped the billionaire from acting as if he could.
If you withdraw from the agreement, you could be sentenced to pay a fee of 1.000 million dollars.
On Monday, Elon Musk responded directly, with sarcasm, to messages from the CEO of Twitter about fake accounts.
Parag Agrawal underlined, in his message, that the social network suspends more than half a million 'spam' accounts every day "even before users can see them".
"The toughest challenge is that many accounts that look superficially fake are actually real people. And some of the fake accounts that are really the most dangerous and cause the most harm to our users may appear to be completely legitimate.“, He added.
According to Agrawal, this is why the Twitter team cannot identify all fake profiles.
"We measure this internally. And each quarter, we estimate that less than 5% of the number of monetizable daily active users (mDAU) for the quarter are spam accounts“he noted.
BUT: Elon Musk temporarily suspends purchase of Twitter
However, the CEO indicated that "actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were well below 5%".
But Elon Musk mentioned, this Tuesday, in his 'twitte', the existence of “20% of fake/spam accounts”, that is, four times more than Twitter claims.
Musk warned that the number could be much higher and that his offer to purchase had been based on the accuracy of the social network's records.
For Brian Quinn, this kind of language from the founder of Tesla makes no sense.
"The disclosures you are complaining about are the same as the company filed with the SEC (United States Securities and Exchange Commission) over a long period“, He said.
Elon Musk suggested for the first time on Monday at a technology conference in Miami that he would like to pay less to buy Twitter and that a viable deal at a lower price was not out of the question.
It was also at the All In Summit that Musk estimated that at least 20% of the 229 million Twitter accounts are 'spam bots', noting that the percentage is at the lower end of his assessment.
