No matter that you are the richest man on Earth, there are things you can’t afford. For Elon Musk, it’s Twitter. You should be aware that he had been going to acquire Twitter for $44 billion. However, in early June, Musk decided to withdraw the offer, which made Twitter sue him. Many still wonder why Musk changed his mind. According to the Tesla CEO, social media couldn’t prove to him that spam and fake accounts make up less than 5% of the total number of Twitter accounts.
Less than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2022
Elon Musk is sure that at least 10% of Twitter’s daily active users that see ads are not authentic. What’s worse, in his countersuit, Musk said that 65 million, or 28%, of 229 million daily active users on Twitter, do not see any ads. For this, he used a special tool, namely Botometer. The latter has been created by Indiana University and it measures inauthentic accounts.
What Does Elon Musk Want To Know From Twitter?
The trial will begin in October. In a corresponding document, Musk’s lawyers wrote: “Twitter was miscounting the number of false and spam accounts on its platform, as part of its scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects. Twitter’s disclosures have slowly unraveled, with Twitter frantically closing the gates on information in a desperate bid to prevent the Musk parties from uncovering its fraud.”
Today, Reuters quoted Elon Musk’s tweet, where he says if the social media reveals how it samples 100 members and confirms that they are real Twitter users, the deal will be back on. Musk also added: “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
In the filing sent to the court, Elon Musk and his lawyers said that Twitter doubled the number of monetized daily active users. So it turns out there are as many as 1.9 people each quarter that fall into this category. But it’s far from the truth.
Gizchina News of the week
The net is buzzing about this. In a tweet, one of the users asked whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating the “dubious claims” made by Twitter. In his turn, Musk tweeted back, “Good question, why aren’t they?”
I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage.
Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2022
This Will Last Long
Obviously, the legal battle between these two is gaining momentum. It’s reasonable that both sides will blame each other until the end of the trial. For instance, earlier, Musk said he had been tricked into bidding for Twitter. Of course, the latter rejected this and filed another lawsuit.
“According to Musk, he — the billionaire founder of multiple companies, advised by Wall Street bankers and lawyers — was hoodwinked by Twitter into signing a $44 billion merger agreement.” Twitter added, “That story is as implausible and contrary to the fact as it sounds.”
In this regard, Bret Taylor, Twitter’s Chairman of the Board, said, “His claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant.”
What About Botometer?
Getting back to the tool Elon Musk used for getting more accurate information about the Twitter daily active users, Twitter called Botometer unreliable and pointed out that it once called Mr. Musk’s own Twitter account “highly likely to be a bot.”
“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” we can read in the filing with the court.
We have no clue how this deal will be over. But it seems these are dark deeds. We mean Musk is the world’s richest man and no one argues this. But most of his wealth is tied up in Tesla shares. To acquire Twitter, he has decided to borrow against the value of some of his Tesla shares to raise as much as $12.5 billion. As a result, Tesla’s shares dropped a lot. There have been many questions about how Musk will collect the money required for the deal. And all these sound a bit odd. Maybe financially, it was hard or impossible for him to complete the deal so he decided to play this game. Who knows.
