Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter in jeopardy

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion but has threatened to walk away

It has been stated that Elon Musk’s plan to acquire Twitter is in risk as a result of Twitter’s inability to validate its claims regarding the number of spam accounts.

The 51-year-old CEO of Tesla, who made a $44 billion purchase offer for Twitter, has threatened to back out of the agreement if the firm cannot demonstrate that fewer than 5% of its daily active users are automated spam accounts.

A month ago, Twitter provided Musk and his team with access to the ‘firehose’ of raw data on the platform, which contains information on hundreds of millions of tweets each day.

However, according to three individuals who are acquainted with the situation, Musk’s team has come to the conclusion that Twitter’s data on spam accounts are not reliable. This information was provided to the Washington Post.

According to the sources, Musk’s team is likely to take serious measures, although the sources did not indicate what kind of action could be taken. According to a story in the Post, Musk could be facing a significant legal challenge if he decides to back out of the transaction.

During a conference intended to offer more light on Twitter’s phony and bot accounts as it spars with Musk about “spam bots” on Thursday, the firm said that it removes 1 million spam accounts daily.

Musk claims that Twitter has greatly undercounted the number of these “spam bots”—automated accounts that often spread fraud and misinformation—on its platform without providing any supporting data.

During the call, Twitter representatives stated that the number of spam accounts constitutes a percentage of its active user base that is significantly less than five percent.

Twitter has stated that it reviews “thousands of accounts” that are chosen at random in order to determine whether or not an account is real. The data that is used to make this determination includes public and private information such as IP addresses, phone numbers, geolocation, and how the account behaves when it is active. This information is used to calculate the number of accounts that are used for malicious spam.

IP addresses, phone numbers, and locations are examples of the kind of private data that are not accessible to the general public and are therefore absent from the data “firehose” that was provided to Musk. Twitter has stated that the use of such sensitive data helps prevent the incorrect identification of actual accounts as spam.

Twitter and its investors are aware of the issue with bogus accounts being created on the platform. For many years, the corporation has provided the United States Securities and Exchange Commission with estimates regarding its bot population while simultaneously including a caveat that these estimates may be too conservative.