New Delhi: Elon Musk, chief executive officer (CEO) of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, on Tuesday questioned Twitter's claim that more than 95 percent of daily active users are real on the microblogging site via poll. Musk took to his Twitter handle and said, "Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?"
Earlier today, Musk has cleared it out that the Twitter acquisition deal will only go forward if the spam accounts on the microblogging site are less than 5 per cent.
In a tweet on Tuesday, the billionaire clearly stated that the deal can only move forward if there's clarity on the spam accounts of the social media platform.
"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," Musk said in a tweet response.
According to the report, at All-In Summit, Musk estimated that about 20 per cent of Twitter’s 22.9 crore accounts are spam bots, percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment.
Musk also trolled Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining Twitter’s effort to fight bots and how the platform has consistently estimated that less than 5 per cent of Twitter accounts are fake.
According to analysts, the reason Musk is seeking a lower price, mainly because of a huge slip in value of Tesla stock, some of which he has pledged to fund the acquisition of Twitter.
On Monday, Twitter shares closed down just over 8 per cent at $37.39, below where the stock was just before Musk disclosed that he was Twitter's largest shareholder.
Meanwhile, shares of Tesla closed on Monday at $724.37, down 6 per cent. The firm has lost one-third of their value since the trading day before Elon Musk disclosed his Twitter stake.
Musk, on Friday, tweeted his plan to buy Twitter was placed on temporary hold as he tried to ascertain the number of fake accounts on the social media platform and the hold was pending details of Twitter’s calculation that fake accounts are less than 5 per cent of its users.