Elon Musk has hinted at cutting the $44 billion deal price he offered to buy the “digital town square” Twitter. Musk said on Monday Twitter’s claim that less than 5 per cent users on its platform are bot accounts is undervalued and the number could be at least 20 per cent. Last week, Musk put the deal on hold citing the undercounted bot accounts on the social media platform. “In making an offer I was relying on the public statements and filings but if those filings are not accurate, then you can’t pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed,” Musk said in a conference in Miami, where he joined virtually.
Musk says counting bot accounts can’t be ‘some deep mystery’
Asked if the deal will be viable at a different price, Elon Musk suggested that he may lower the price and said “it is not out of the question”. “The more questions I ask, the more concerns grow.” Musk, in his usual candid self, said currently he is debating the number of fake or bot accounts with Twitter’s chief executive Parag Agrawal. “They claim that they’ve got this complex methodology that only they can understand … It can’t be some deep mystery that is, like, more complex than the human soul or something like that,” he said.
Agrawal tweeted on Monday about the issue of fake bots and reiterated that it is less than 5 per cent from the last many quarters. Twitter’s CEO also said Twitter dynamically removes such accounts and the count is as much as half a million everyday. He, however, said the fake bots estimation can’t be done externally.
“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 (monetisable daily active users) on any given day,” Agrawal said in a tweet Monday. To this Twitter thread, Musk responded with a poop emoji. Twitter’s shares fell over 8 per cent on Monday.
Musk on his Coca Cola tweet: Most liked tweet by any living human
At the conference, Musk said external estimates by many firms suggest that at least 20 per cent of mDAUs on Twitter are fake bots. “My concern is it’s not 5% and is maybe 80 to 90 per cent,” Musk said. At the end of the day it (the issues with Twitter) should be fixable, within a reasonable time frame, and without revenue collapsing, he added.
Musk also gave an analogy of his latest joke about buying Coca Cola and adding cocaine back into it. Musk said that tweet, which has around 5 million likes on it, is the most liked tweet by any living human, yet it accounts for only 2 to 2.5 per cent of Twitter’s total DAUs.
“The reality is that Twitter at this point has a very far left bias. And I would call myself a moderate neither Republican nor a Democrat. In fact I have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, and have never voted for Republicans,” Musk said. “The point I am trying to make is, this is not a right wing takeover, but probably a moderate wing takeover and an attempt that people of all political beliefs feel they are welcome and express their beliefs without fear of being banned or shadow banned. We obviously need to get rid of the (ro)bot armies that are unduly influencing public opinion,” he added.
from | The Financial Express https://ift.tt/XPMKlUS
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