Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter can’t move forward unless the company shows public proof that less than 5% of the accounts on the platform are fake or spam.
Musk made the comment in a reply to another user on Twitter early Tuesday. He spent much of the previous day in a back-and-forth with Twitter CEO Paraj Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.
He added that:-
“Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”
At a Miami technology conference Monday, Musk estimated that at least 20% of Twitter’s 229 million accounts are spam bots, a percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Also at the All In Summit, Musk gave the strongest hint yet that he would like to pay less for Twitter than his $44 billion offer made last month.
He said a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question, according to the report by Bloomberg, which said it viewed a livestream video of the conference posted by a Twitter user.
While Musk reaffirmed that he is still committed to acquiring Twitter after stating the deal is on hold last week, he also confirmed during his nearly two-hour-long interview that a new price, especially a lower one, would not be far-fetched. Musk reportedly said that the more questions he asks Twitter brass, the more his concerns grow, as he is yet to receive a concrete answer on how many fake or spam accounts are on the platform.
Musk said he believes 20 percent of Twitter accounts are fake or spam, a number that needs to be significantly reduced and could be the reasoning behind his thirst for a renegotiation of terms. Perhaps Twitter is not as valuable with fewer users, of course, and Musk may feel that the already-large asking price of $54.20 per share is simply too high to justify when one-in-five users are not actually humans.
If Musk backs out of the deal, he will be required to pay Twitter a $1 billion termination fee and could be subjected to additional litigation due to damages.
