Musk Pauses Twitter Deal Until He Gets Proof on Spambots

The Tesla CEO tweeted on Tuesday that the deal to buy the platform “cannot move forward” until he gets the proof he demands.

“Give Me Proof”

Elon Musk has reiterated a hold on his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. On Tuesday, the billionaire said that the deal “cannot move forward” until the company proves that spambots make up less than five percent of its users.

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.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

A day earlier, Musk had a tussle with Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal over the prevalence of spambots on the platform. 

Agrawal posted a long thread on Monday where he acknowledged the issue. However, he insisted that numbers are not as high as Musk claimed.

“Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5%,” he tweeted. He added that Twitter suspends “over half a million” spam accounts each day.

In one tweet, Agrawal said that estimating the number of bots cannot be carried out externally as it required information Twitter could not share. Musk, who agreed to buy the platform last month disagreed with that position by posting a poop emoji.

The Tesla CEO initially put his offer to take over the social media giant on hold last week. He has said that he suspects spam bots comprise up to 20% of all Twitter users.

In a conference in Miami on Monday, Musk touched on the possibility of buying the platform for lower than agreed.

“You can't pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed,” he said.

The drama that has ensued since the $44 billion agreement has hurt the company’s share price. On Monday, it further dropped by over 8% to close at $37.39.