Musk: Twitter takeover will be halted until there is evidence about the percentage of fake accounts

Elon Musk says his takeover of Twitter cannot go through until the social network comes up with evidence about the number of fake accounts. According to Twitter, that’s less than 5 percent of daily active users, but Musk thinks it’s much higher.

Musk claims that the percentage of fake and spam accounts on Twitter is 20 percent and he says it could be much higher. Twitter indicates in its own figures that less than 5 percent of monetizable daily active users are such fake accounts.

Musk said his $44 billion takeover bid was based on information Twitter provided to the SEC. He questions the correctness of this, because in his opinion Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal does not want to give full disclosure about the way in which the percentage of fake accounts is calculated. “This deal won’t go any further until he does,” Musk said.

Monday Agrawal explained how twitter handles spam accounts. Its assessment is done with multiple human reviews, at random samples from thousands of accounts. The CEO emphasizes that non-public personal data is used, such as IP addresses, telephone numbers and location data. Only with such data can it be determined whether an account can be classified under the category ‘monetizable’, Agrawal says.

Musk and other parties cannot properly estimate the percentage of fake accounts without that data, because it is not possible for third parties to determine which accounts are counted as monetizable, Twitter argues. The social network cannot provide that data because it is personal data.

According to Agrawal, Twitter already shared an overview with Musk last week of how Twitter calculates the percentage of spam accounts. As far as is known, Musk has not responded substantively. He responded on Twitter Monday with a poo emoji on the explanation of Agrawal. Tuesday he added that Twitter “if the numbers are correct” should be open to verification of the percentage by a third party.