Elon Musk replies with poop emoji after Twitter boss responds over fake account concerns | Business Newsletter

Twitter’s CEO has hit back after Elon Musk put the deal to buy the platform “on hold” over concerns about fake user accounts.

Parag Agrawal said he has “confidence” in the company’s estimate that less than 5% of users are spam.

He said the company suspends more than half a million spam accounts every day, and millions of accounts suspected of spam will be locked every week if they can’t pass the human verification challenge.

He said Twitter uses public and private data, like IP addresses and geolocation, to check accounts, with random samples reviewed every few months.

“We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing to chat with him and all of you,” he added, in a series of Twitter posts.

Musk tweeted on Friday that he was temporarily pauses its $44 billion takeover of Twitter until he gets more “details” of support [the] calculates that spam/fake accounts actually make up less than 5% of users”.

The Tesla CEO later added: “Still committed to acquisitions.”

His comments have sparked speculation that he may be trying to renegotiate the price of the deal or back out.

Read more: Elon Musk’s pause in Twitter takeover causes a hit

Musk has said that his team will do their own analysis, voicing doubts about the accuracy of the numbers Twitter reported in its most recent financial filings.

However, Mr Agrawal said third parties would not be able to accurately estimate the number because there was “an important need to use both public and private information (which we cannot share)”.

“Outside, it’s not even possible to know which accounts count as mDAU [monetisable daily active users] on any given day,” he added.

Musk’s emoji response

Musk responded with a foul-smelling emoji and said: “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?

“This is fundamental to Twitter’s financial health.”

He disagreed with the comment of researcher Andrea Stroppa, who said: “Parag, I’m surprised you say that outside researchers can’t estimate bots. That’s not true.

“As [a] researcher has worked ~9 years on these topics (I am the author of one of the first independent reports on twitter bots) I would say it is possible. BTW: open your data. “

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Twitter shares fell below $38, continuing to fall following Mr. Agrawal’s tweets.

They have lost all their gains since Musk revealed he bought a 9% stake in the company.

Over the weekend, Musk sparked a warning to investors when he tweeted about problems with Twitter’s algorithm and “potential bugs in the code.”