Dubious SNL host Elon Musk may have reacted with pure-fire emoji to Snoop Dogg’s (joking) plan to buy Twitter, but the Tesla CEO’s got a whole other vibe for the Twitter CEO. And Parag Agrawal may very well now regret taking over the gig in November 2021 after Jack Dorsey’s departure from his previous position. It sure seems like Musk is pulling off a troll job on Twitter, weeks after beginning a deal to buy the joint for $44 billion and then putting everything on hold for reasons that don’t sound believable to many people. It’s confusing! That’s especially the case since Elon went in so big on his “free speech absolutism” and made so many far-right users (and ex-users) happy, and that’s only contributed to the overall chaos. of the situation.
Yup, one wonders if Elon’s realized that, even with the backing of fellow billionaires around the globe, he can’t realistically afford to buy Twitter. That’s a cynical take, but it’s hard to believe that Elon’s suddenly surprised that spam bots proliferate through the platform. He’s now acting as though he’s not taking things seriously at all while seemingly attempting to p*ss off Agrawal. Speaking of which, Agrawal fired off a detailed and carefully composed thread about spam, which begins with the below tweet.
Let’s talk about spam. And let’s do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context…
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Throughout that thread, Agrawal describes how it’s an ongoing and demanding process to stay on top of spam, and that involves shutting down “half a million” such accounts every day, and so on, by requiring safeguards including phone verification.
We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
Again, it’s a long thread, and instead of letting Agrawal make his case, Elon decided to poop on everything. No really, he volleyed a poop emoji at the Twitter CEO.
💩
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Musk also suggested that he didn’t even read the entire thread by asking (of the spam accounts), “Have you tried just calling them?”
Have you tried just calling them?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Yep, Agrawal attempted (in his thread) to lay out the case that Twitter takes spam very seriously and how internal data shows that less than 5% of accounts have circumvented the process. Elon keeps arguing, very publicly, about this.
So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
One wonders if he’s simply having (non-)buyer’s remorse and wants to walk away without the $1 billion breakup fee. That actually wouldn’t be too surprising after Elon’s (now-)former partner, Grimes, revealed that the richest man on earth wouldn’t buy a new mattress when she found herself sleeping atop a hole.