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Musk sets a condition to complete the Twitter purchase deal

Musk sets a condition to complete the Twitter purchase deal




Elon Musk reiterated his claim that fake accounts can make up more than 20 percent of Twitter's users, saying the social media company's acquisition cannot go ahead until the company proves the accuracy of its much lower estimate of less than 5%. Musk entered into a deal to buy the company for $44 billion, which is estimated to have 226 million daily active users. The CEO of Tesla tweeted: 20% of the accounts are fake. That's 4 times what the company claims. The number could be much higher. My presentation was based on the accuracy of the Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The Twitter CEO has publicly refused to show proof that the rate is less than 5%. This transaction can't move forward until he does. Musk made similar comments at the Miami tech conference. During the presentation, the Tesla CEO estimated that bot accounts could make up at least 20% of Twitter users. What I'm currently told is that there is no way to know how many bots there are, Musk said. Twitter said it was committed to completing the transaction at the agreed price and terms as quickly as practicable. There has been speculation that Elon Musk is using the bot count discussion as a tactic to negotiate a lower acquisition price. The deal will not be feasible at a lower price, the company's CEO said at the Miami tech conference. The new comments come days after Musk said his deal to acquire the social network was temporarily on hold due to concerns about the number of fake accounts. Although he later said he remains committed to the acquisition. Attempts by Tesla CEO to clarify these numbers led to a public rift with CEO Parag Agrawal. Agrawal said Musk's proposal to measure the problem by randomly sampling 100 accounts would not work. "Our actual internal estimates for the past four quarters have been well below 5%," he wrote. Agrawal also provided details of the number of fake accounts that Twitter suspends daily, and explained how the team identifies them. "We shared an overview of the appreciation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him and all of you," the current Twitter CEO said. He added: "The company does not believe that estimates can be made externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we cannot share). One of the reasons why Agrawal says monitoring bots is so difficult is that many accounts run by real people are ostensibly fake. But Musk did not like these tweets. "How do advertisers know what they're getting for their money," he said. This is fundamental to Twitter's financial health. Musk has told investors that he wants to change Twitter so that it does not rely on advertising money for most of its revenue, and instead gets more income from subscriptions. The Tesla CEO suggested publicly sampling 100 accounts and specifying the number of bots as verification. Musk has made tackling the number of fake Twitter accounts a key part of his presentation of how to improve the service under his ownership. He also spoke of his desire to prioritize freedom of expression, and open-source the platform's algorithms.

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