CEO Parag Agrawal on Monday tweeted that internal estimates of spam accounts on the social media platform for the last four quarters were “well under 5%,” responding to acquirer Elon Musk’s criticism of the company’s handling of phoney accounts.
Musk, who on Friday said his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” pending information on spam accounts, responded to Agrawal’s defence of the company’s methodology with a poop emoji. Following the exchange, Twitter shares on Monday fell below levels preceding Musk’s disclosure of a 9.2% stake in the company in early April. The shares were down 7.7%, at $37.50 a share, in afternoon trade. That compares to a closing price of $39.31 on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed his stake.
Musk has called for tests of random samples of Twitter users to identify bots, or automated accounts, and said he has yet to see “any” analysis that shows spam accounts making up less than 5% of the user base.Independent researchers have estimated that anywhere from 9% to 15% of the millions of Twitter profiles are automated accounts, or bots.
Musk is just using an excuse to back out. He was never interested.