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Elon Musk considers paying less for Twitter as fake account doubts grow.
Elon Musk has suggested he could seek a lower price for his purchase of Twitter, saying there could be at least four times as many fake accounts as the social media giant has disclosed.
Key points:
- Elon Musk believes 20 per cent of accounts on Twitter could be spam and fake accounts
- On Friday, he announced his deal to purchase Twitter for $61.4 billion was on hold pending information on fake accounts
- He says he would be open to purchasing the social media site at a lower price
“You can’t pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed,” he said at a conference in Miami.
On Friday, Mr Musk said his $US44 billion ($61.4 billion) deal to buy Twitter was on hold pending information on spam accounts.
He said he suspects fake accounts make up at least 20 per cent of all users on the site — compared to Twitter’s official estimate of 5 per cent.
When asked at the All-In Summit conference whether the Twitter deal is viable at a different price, Mr Musk responded: “I mean, it’s not out of the question.”
“The more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow,” he said.
“They claim that they’ve got this complex methodology that only they can understand.
Twitter shares extended losses in late afternoon trading after Mr Musk’s comments.
The stock dropped more than 8 per cent to close at $US37.39 ($53.44), lower than the day before Mr Musk revealed his Twitter stake in early April, sparking doubts that the billionaire entrepreneur would proceed with his acquisition of the company at the agreed price.
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Earlier, Twitter chief executive officer Parag Agrawal tweeted that internal estimates of spam accounts on the social media platform for the last four quarters were “well under 5 per cent,” responding to days of criticism by Mr Musk of the company’s handling of phoney accounts.
Twitter’s estimate, which has stayed the same since 2013, could not be reproduced externally given the need to use both public and private information to determine whether an account is spam, he added.
Mr Musk responded to Mr Agrawal’s defence of the company’s methodology with a poop emoji.
“So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” Mr Musk wrote.
Musk pledges to clamp down on fake accounts
Musk has pledged changes to Twitter’s content moderation practices, railing against decisions like the company’s ban of former US president Donald Trump as overly aggressive while pledging to crack down on “spambots” on the platform.
Musk has called for tests of random samples of Twitter users to identify bots. He also said, “there is some chance it might be over 90 per cent of daily active users.”
Independent researchers have estimated that anywhere from 9 per cent to 15 per cent of the millions of Twitter profiles are bots.
Twitter does not currently require users to register using their real identities and expressly permits automated, parody and pseudonymous profiles on the service.
It does ban impersonation and spam and penalises accounts when the company determines their purpose is to “deceive or manipulate others” by engaging in scams, coordinating abuse campaigns or artificially inflating engagement.
Mr Musk’s comments to a private audience could add to concerns about his disclosures of market-moving information.
The Tesla CEO, known for his candid Twitter posts, has a long history of skirmishes with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Recently, Mr Musk was criticised by a US judge for trying to escape a settlement with the SEC requiring oversight of his Tesla tweets.
Reuters
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