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Elon Musk fueled rumours that he could try to renegotiate his buyout of Twitter Inc., saying that a feasible agreement at a lower price isn’t “out of the question.”
At the closing of trade in New York, Twitter shares were down 8.2 percent. The stock has been falling due to anticipation that Musk may back out of the $44 billion deal. This issue has risen over the last week, as Musk has questioned Twitter’s publicly available data on the number of spam and fraudulent accounts on its social media platform.
Musk went on to say at a tech conference in Miami on Monday that bogus users make up at least 20% of all Twitter accounts. According to a livestreamed video of his statements provided by a Twitter user, it was the low end of his estimate of the amount of bots on the network, and he inquired rhetorically if it could be as high as 90 percent.
“Right now, I’m informed there’s no way to know the number of bots,” Musk said during the conference. “It’s like, as mysterious as the human soul.”
Twitter declined to comment. The San Francisco-based corporation estimates quarterly that spam accounts represent for fewer than 5% of total users.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, said last week that his offer to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” pending information regarding how many spam and bogus accounts are on the platform. He tweeted over the weekend that he wanted to do his own analysis of Twitter’s user base using a random sample of 100 user accounts. Soon after, Musk said that Twitter’s legal team contacted to complain that he had violated their non-disclosure agreement by publicly disclosing the company’s technique.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal refuted it on Monday in a tweet thread that provided additional information on the company’s approach to spam accounts. Agrawal stated that Twitter manually reviews thousands of accounts every quarter to determine how many should be considered spam, but that the process could not be done outside due to user privacy issues.
According to Agrawal, Twitter “provided an outline of the estimating process with Elon a week ago.” Musk responded to the CEO’s tweet thread by first asking why Twitter doesn’t just call users to verify their identity and then sending a faeces emoji.
Musk spoke at a conference hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, the hosts of the podcast “All-In.” The $7,500-per-person event was completely sold out, and organisers stated that media were not authorised to attend. Musk made a videoconference appearance at the Miami meeting.
The 50-year-old millionaire began purchasing Twitter shares in January and revealed a 9.2 percent position in the firm on April 4. On April 25, Twitter’s board of directors accepted Musk’s $44 billion bid to purchase the firm and take it private, but the transaction is still months away, and Twitter’s stock is trading well below the offer price.
The gap between Musk’s $54.20-per-share bid and Twitter’s share price continues to expand, wiping out all of the gains earned by the shares since Elon Musk revealed his position in the social media network.
