On July 9th, Elon Musk, who previously reached an agreement with Twitter to buy the entire site for $44 billion, pulled out of the deal due to a lack of information regarding the number of total bots and spam accounts.
Musk’s initial request to buy the site was in mid-April, and Musk was skeptical about Twitter’s number of spam and bot accounts since then but he still committed. His plans included “defeating all spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” as well as adding moderation features and publicizing the site’s algorithm process.
Elon Musk contacted Twitter to find out how much of the website’s total population contained spam bots but to no avail. Back in May, still awaiting their response, he decided to put the deal on hold. Finding out the number of spam bots on the site was important because his main goal was to ensure that most Twitter users were human.
Spam bots are accounts that are automatically generated and are controlled by AI instead of a person behind a screen. According to Twitter, millions of these spam bots are deleted daily. They tend to mislead users and are an even bigger problem for Musk.
Musk estimated that spam accounts could account for more than 20% or more of total users. Twitter argued that the total was less than 5%. “Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally…it’s not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day,” said Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal.
After Musk cancelled his plan to buy Twitter, the site’s shares fell by 7% in extended trading. Another Elon Musk-owned company, Tesla, was down 24% over the last month, which may also have contributed to his decision. The drop in shares may have been related to his withdrawal, leading Musk to decide that the restoration of his own company would be worth the $1 billion termination fee and any additional damages.
Links:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1518677066325053441
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62104263
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-cant-just-walk-away-from-twitter-deal-by-paying-1-billion.html
Musk’s initial request to buy the site was in mid-April, and Musk was skeptical about Twitter’s number of spam and bot accounts since then but he still committed. His plans included “defeating all spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” as well as adding moderation features and publicizing the site’s algorithm process.
Elon Musk contacted Twitter to find out how much of the website’s total population contained spam bots but to no avail. Back in May, still awaiting their response, he decided to put the deal on hold. Finding out the number of spam bots on the site was important because his main goal was to ensure that most Twitter users were human.
Spam bots are accounts that are automatically generated and are controlled by AI instead of a person behind a screen. According to Twitter, millions of these spam bots are deleted daily. They tend to mislead users and are an even bigger problem for Musk.
Musk estimated that spam accounts could account for more than 20% or more of total users. Twitter argued that the total was less than 5%. “Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally…it’s not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day,” said Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal.
After Musk cancelled his plan to buy Twitter, the site’s shares fell by 7% in extended trading. Another Elon Musk-owned company, Tesla, was down 24% over the last month, which may also have contributed to his decision. The drop in shares may have been related to his withdrawal, leading Musk to decide that the restoration of his own company would be worth the $1 billion termination fee and any additional damages.
Links:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1518677066325053441
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62104263
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-cant-just-walk-away-from-twitter-deal-by-paying-1-billion.html
