Another day, another late night tweet from Elon Musk trying to back out of buying Twitter. After trolling CEO Parag Agrawal with the poop emoji, Musk is now claiming that the social media platform’s spam/fake account problem is significantly larger than what was presented in their SEC disclosure. After conducting his own wonky, crowd-source investigation, Musk says that the number of fake accounts is at least 20% if not higher.
“20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher. My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Musk tweeted. “Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
This latest volley is the closest Musk has come to officially backing out of his acquisition of Twitter, which analysts were never fully convinced was going to go through. Particularly as share prices began to fall shortly after Musk and the social media company entered into an agreement. As for Musk’s sudden focus on fake accounts even after Agrawal shared a detailed look at how Twitter deletes over half a million of fraudulent users a day, no one’s buying it. Via CNN:
“The bot issue at the end of the day … feels more to us like the “dog ate the homework” excuse to bail on the Twitter deal or talk down a lower price,” Dan Ives and John Katsingris, analysts at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note on Monday.
Even Donald Trump doesn’t think the deal is going to go through, and that guy can’t pronounce the name of his own social media company.
(Via CNN)