Elon Musk And Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Discuss Bots On Twitter With Deal In Doubt
In a tweet Thread, Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal discuss bots on Twitter with the deal in doubt. Parag outlines the approach of Twitter to dealing with spam accounts and the challenges it faces in dealing with them.
Agrawal said that Twitter (TWTR) suspends over half a million spam accounts every day. He reiterated a longstanding Twitter statistic that less than 5% of daily active users are spam accounts. A stat Musk cited on Friday announcing that its $44 billion deal to buy Twitter was temporarily on hold.
Parag Agrawal said that this estimate is based on multiple human reviews of thousands of accounts randomly sampled, but it is not possible to know which accounts did externally counted for on any given day. Twitter has previously acknowledged that they believe that while its estimates are reasonable, the measurements did not independently verify. The precise number of fake or spam accounts could be higher.
Agrawal’s initial 13 tweets received a reply from Musk reflecting the extraordinary and extremely adorable nature of the online deal: stool emoji.
Musk with a somewhat more thoughtful question. Musk Requested that, so how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? He added this is critical to the financial health of Twitter.
Musk has repeatedly spoken out against spam bots and accounts on Twitter. He once described cryptocurrency spambots as the most annoying problem on the platform. Anyone familiar with the responses to Musk’s tweets knows that they are full of these types of scams, many of which try to take advantage of Musk’s name.
But some analysts speculate that Elon Musk could be using the bot debate to lower the price. He will have to buy Twitter, either as a standard trading tactic or unnecessary.
Twitter’s stock price has wiped out all of its gains in the weeks since Musk announced his stake in the company and is currently trading at $37.39 a share, well below Musk’s offer price of $54.20.
Dan Ives and John Katsingris, Wedbush Securities analysts, wrote in a note that the bot problem at the end of the day sounds like a dog eating homework is a reason to save a Twitter deal or talk about a lower price.
Musk appears to have ratcheted up speculation on Monday, saying a deal to buy Twitter at a lower price could not be out of the question while also dismissing his estimate that at least 20% of all Twitter accounts are false, according to media. Musk did not say how he arrived at that number and did not respond to a Business media request for comment.
In a Twitter thread, Elon Musk and Parag Agrawal discuss bots on Twitter with a deal in doubt because of Musk. Parag said that most Twitter spam campaigns use a mix of humans and automation rather than being driven primarily by bots. He said analysis across legitimate and fake accounts could be tricky.
He said that the difficult challenge is that many fake accounts are real people. He added that some of the spam accounts that are the most dangerous, and cause the most harm to our users, may appear completely legitimate on the surface.
Agrawal said Twitter has been in contact with Musk regarding the spam issue.
He added that they shared an overview of the evaluation process with Elon a week ago and looked forward to continuing to speak with him and all of them.
