Elon Musk claims ten percent of Twitter users are fake
Musk’s legal filing came as a response to Twitter’s lawsuit seeking a court order compelling him to complete the proposed buyout of the company. The billionaire agreed to buy the microblogging site for $44 billion in April. But soon after the deal was announced, he started expressing doubts over fake accounts. Musk alleged that Twitter is falsely reporting its active users, something it has been caught doing in the past as well. A long public spat ensued, with Musk threatening to walk out of the deal if Twitter doesn’t share more information on its methodology of counting fake accounts. The social network gave him access to some internal tools but the outcome wasn’t positive. Musk eventually announced that he is terminating the deal because the company concealed information. As expected, Twitter didn’t let him back away so easily and filed a lawsuit against him. The company alleged that Musk is abandoning the proposed acquisition because of stock market turbulence following the announcement of the deal. The concern over fake accounts is unfounded, the social network suggested. A Twitter investor also joined the firm against the potential new owner and its biggest shareholder. Musk formally answered Twitter’s suit with a counter filing. It was kept confidential for about a week. But we now know what the Tesla chief has stated in his counter, thanks to The New York Times. Along with claiming that Twitter has more than ten percent bots, Musk also alleged that the company doesn’t serve ads to all of its “monetizable” active users. Almost 30 percent of its 229 million active users in the first quarter of this year did not see ads. Twitter hiding these details tricked Musk into agreeing to buy the company at “an inflated price,” the counter filing states.
Twitter has hit back again
Shortly after Musk’s counter filing, Twitter responded with another legal filing. The company mentioned that Musk used an unreliable tool to measure the proportion of fake accounts on the platform. It is referring to Botometer, a tool that had once deemed his Twitter account “highly likely to be a bot” too. “His claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant,” said Bret Taylor, the chairman of Twitter’s board. An expedited trial of this Twitter vs. Elong Musk saga begins on October 17th this year. But we might be in for a long legal battle. Time will tell who comes out on top.
