Elon Musk spent weeks behind Twitter executives with the intention of buying 100% of the company’s shares. After achieving his purpose by signing an agreement in which he promised to pay 44 million dollars (41 million euros) for the platform, the businessman has backed down from the possibility that there are more false accounts than Twitter recognizes.
As he explained in ‘All In’, a conference held in Miami, he suspected that fake or spam accounts could represent 20% of all users on the social network. This figure would be three quarters more than what Parag Agrawal, current CEO of Twitter , acknowledges (5%).
The information on which the tycoon is based is an external analysis they made of the platform. Given the possibility that said data is true, Musk has paralyzed his purchase contract and affirms that he will not go ahead unless they present proof that real accounts represent 95%.
Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share). Externally, it’s not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022
On Tuesday Agrawal defended himself through a post on the social network that pointed out that it was impossible to make an external estimate of spam and fake accounts. However, this is not enough for the founder of SpaceX who responded to the tweet with an emoji of a poop with eyes.
Musk explained a few hours later that his purchase offer was based on the figures that Twitter officially published before the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the event that this information was not accurate, the businessman threatened not to go ahead with his agreement.
The next day, the Tesla owner posted a poll for his followers on Twitter. In it , he asked them if they thought 95% of users were human: one answer was a laughing emoji and the other a robot.
The businessman considers that the Securities and Exchange Commission should initiate an investigation in the event that the platform does not offer reliable data on its version. Meanwhile, Musk responded to hidden camera videos in which some employees of the social network spoke of an alleged leftist bias and admitted some censorship.
Twitter executive calling Elon Musk mentally handicapped, "special" and saying he has "aspergers."
This Twitter exec goes on to say that Twitter is "not here to give people free speech" @elonmusk is going to want to see this one too…pic.twitter.com/dQZamaLiC8
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 18, 2022
Is it all a Musk ruse?
Some analysts believe that the issue of fake and spam accounts is just an excuse for Elon Musk to reduce the price of his purchase. Last Friday, May 13, the businessman confirmed that the purchase promise was still valid, but at the conference he spoke that an agreement at a lower price was not ruled out.
However, the already signed contract obliges the party that wants to break with it to pay 1,000 million dollars. Therefore, to reach another agreement, Musk would have to pay said penalty in the event that he wants to change it.
Other companies that could buy Twitter
If Musk backs down and breaks the current contract, the company could seek offers from other businessmen and not just stick to the tycoon’s. A possible interested party would be the technology firm Microsoft, which in the past has already made billion-dollar proposals to acquire other companies, such as Activision Blizzard , bought for almost 70,000 million dollars, or LinkedIn , for about 26,000 million dollars.
Jeff Bezos , who stopped being CEO of Amazon a few months ago, could also fight for Twitter , but has been invested in other projects. This billionaire bought the Washington Post for 250 million dollars and his aerospace company Blue Origin is a competitor of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s.
Other companies that could afford to enter the fight for the purchase of Twitter would be: Alphabet, the parent company of Google; Disney, Salesforce, Softbank, PayPal, Oracle, Meta, etc.