Elon Musk says Twitter (TWTR) deal 'cannot move forward' without proof of 5% bot claim
Musk thinks that the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter is significantly larger than what Twitter says.
Elon Musk has come out stating that the Twitter (TWTR) deal he is currently in cannot move forward until there is proof that fewer than 5 percent of users are bots. This news comes after Musk had halted the deal pending more info on bot statistics.
In response to a Teslarati Tweet on May 17, 2022, Musk has stated that the deal to purchase Twitter cannot go forward until the CEO provides proof that fewer than 5 percent of Twitter users are bots. In the response, Musk notes that his offer was based on “Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate” and that the fake or spam accounts could be anywhere near four times what Twitter claims.
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.
This deal cannot move forward until he does.
For those just playing catch up, three weeks ago Twitter accepted Musk’s $44 billion deal to purchase the social media platform. Since then, Musk said he would unban Donald Trump though Trump says he won’t rejoin Twitter, the Orlando Police Pension Fund have sued Musk and Twitter Board of Directors wishing the deal to be delayed until 2025, and then Musk put the Twitter deal on hold pending information on bot stats.
CNBC reported that Twitter’s shares slipped by 2.22 percent in pre-market trading this week and Musk states that a Twitter deal at a lower price is “not out of the question”. It will be interesting to see how this review into Twitter’s bot statistics affects the company’s share price and whether it impacts Musk’s deal.
The report by CNBC goes on to reference Musk’s Tweets from Friday where he invites other users to repeat his process of working out the percentage of bot accounts. According to Musk, his process is to “Pick any account with a lot of followers. Ignore first 1000 followers, then pick every 10th.” Musk states his team will do a “random sample of 100 followers” of the official Twitter account. Not only is this not random, it’s not a large sample size.
The story with Elon Musk and the purchase of Twitter is certainly one for the ages. We here at Shacknews will do our best to keep you up to date on how this story unfolds. Where do you think it’s going next and what percentage of Twitter users do you think are bots? Let us know in the comments.
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replySam Chandler posted a new article, Elon Musk says Twitter (TWTR) deal 'cannot move forward' without proof of 5% bot claim
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Right but did Elon Musk know that before inquiring about buying Twitter? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he did and just wants to use this as a negotiating to drive the price down.
In the end he will probably just get stuck with the original $44 billion quote for the price because of the way the contract was written up a couple of weeks ago.
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Oddly, this is not far how politic mud slinging comes from about there are different truths. My wife and I were talking about this new over breakfast and my oldest asked a question about it. I tried to explain to her about there being different ways to count things. It was over her head, even for a pretty bright 5th grader. But, being in Business Intelligence I'm all too familiar with the concept of there being different ways to count things.
Ok, that's not quite accurate. There are different ways to "measure" things. The count is pretty much a consistent thing, but some things you don't count, or exclude, for various reasons. Anyways, point is, it's all in the definition. But, to Musk's point, he just need full clarification of definition and accurate data points to back it up AND align to his expectation.
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an opinion column guessed that he never really wanted to own twitter, he just wanted to run it, which is why he's trying to keep as many major shareholders as possible. but now the price difference might be enough for those shareholders that agreed to keep their shares now might want to cash out.
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Can you run something that you don't own?
https://imgur.com/gallery/HuMBY
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Are we going to pretend that Elon Musk didn't know that the 5% number was a bold faced lie before 2022?
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Absolutely. He's intoxicated by his own ego as an edge lord.
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Lol, has he been on Instagram or any social media platform lately? its like 50% bots. This was all a dog and pony show to inflate his ego.
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Not gonna happen. Billionaires love and protect each other.
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/musk-and-bezos-agree-on-who-is-responsible-for-inflation
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Twitter has been reporting the percentage of users who're bots for years in quarterly filing. It's always been around 5%. Elon knew this when he offered to buy the company without doing any due diligence. Guy is just manufacturing nonsense to try to change the terms of the deal he signed.
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Bagholder behavior.
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It is Twitter's definition of monetizable daily active users that leads to these misleading numbers.
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I mean who knows right? We can't see all the people viewing a tweet and not replying who count as active users. All we see are a subset of replies (as dictated by the algorithm) which is just a subset of total replies which is a tiny subset of views.
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I just mean as a user it will seem like bots are a higher percentage of users than they actually are because lurkers are the majority of any given tweet's views. But as an advertising business a lurker is a perfectly valuable active user compared to a poster. In fact a lurker may conceivably be more valuable if you imagine the posters are the more online people who are better conditioned to ignore ads, use third party clients that block them, etc.
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“We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement,” the board said Tuesday in a statement to Bloomberg News. Directors voted earlier to unanimously recommended that shareholders approve Musk’s $54.20-a-share offer.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-17/twitter-board-says-it-plans-to-enforce-musk-merger-agreement-l3asbbxa?srnd=technology-vp
fight fight fight -
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