A stunning surprise to no one in this Solar System
Elon Musk said his bid to acquire and privatize Twitter “cannot move forward” until the social network proves its claim that fake bot accounts make up less than five per cent of all users. The world’s richest meme lord formally launched efforts to take over Twitter last month after buying a 9.2 per cent stake in the biz. He declined an offer to join the board of directors, only to return asking if he could buy the social media platform outright at $54.20 per share. Twitter’s board resisted Musk’s plans at first, installing a “poison pill” to hamper a hostile takeover before accepting the deal, worth over $44 billion. But then it appears Musk spotted something in Twitter’s latest filing to America’s financial watchdog, the SEC. The paperwork asserted that “fewer than five percent” of Twitter’s monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) in the first quarter of 2022 were fake or spammer accounts, which Musk objected to: he felt that figure should be a lot higher. He had earlier proclaimed that ridding Twitter of spam bots was a priority for him, post-takeover. After Musk kicked up a fuss and vowed to investigate, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on Monday responded with a string of tweets defending the less-than-five-percent figure, to which Musk replied with a poop emoji.
