Musk and Twitter’s dispute over bots continues with the dog agreement

Elon Musk’s proposed acquisition of Twitter Inc. it may differ from his skepticism that the company accurately reports the number of spam bots in the service, according to the report, as company executives reiterate that the number is low and try to better explain how they do it. count the numbers.

Twitter often states that spam bots represent less than 5% of the total number of users. Musk, on the other hand, complained that the figure was too high, and threatened to abandon his $ 44 billion buying deal until he received confirmation about the Twitter bot percentage.

Musk’s team concluded that Twitter could not confirm its statistics on spam accounts and had “stopped engaging” in discussions about funding, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The case puts the discovery of Tesla’s chief executive “in great danger,” the newspaper said, quoting people.

“Twitter has and will continue to share information with Mr. Musk in order to end the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement,” a company spokesman said in a Bloomberg News statement after the Post published its story. “We believe this agreement benefits all shareholders. We intend to close the deal and apply the consolidation agreement at the agreed price. ”

Twitter dropped by almost 3.7% in early trading on Friday ahead of market opening. Stocks dropped 10% this year, closing at $ 38.79 on Thursday in New York.

Earlier on Thursday, Twitter executives said at a press conference the company was personally reviewing thousands of accounts each quarter to find the 5% spam bot number, and estimated that the actual number was far below what was disclosed in the files. The company also uses internal data to verify the bot’s number, which includes items such as IP addresses or phone numbers to determine if the account is owned by a person.

Musk demanded that Twitter ratings be researched. Twitter said they had been sharing certain information with Musk, and were working with his team within a purchase agreement. The official declined to comment on which data was shared with Musk, but said the company does not share internal data with outsiders due to privacy issues.

Twitter had previously given Musk access to the company’s “fire hose” for public tweets, but that data only includes public tweet data, not private account data.

A Twitter official warned that it would not be possible for an outsider to accurately estimate the number of bots in the service without that data. Managers have requested anonymity.