Elain Brown Tech 05.17.2022 08:May AM EDT

Elon Musk Is Not Moving Twitter’s Acquisition Forward Without the Exact Number of Bots

Elon Musk publicly tweeted that he is not moving forward with Twitter's $44 billion acquisition without knowing the exact number of bots on the platform.

Twitter calculated in a filing earlier this month that less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter were bots or spam accounts.This number is lower than the actual percentage.

On the other hand, Musk believes that somewhere around twenty percent of the accounts on Twitter are either spam or phony accounts, and he is concerned that the percentage could be substantially higher.

Elon Musk Discusses Twitter Bots

Elon Musk just tweeted about his disappointment with the number of bots that Twitter has claimed in their filings. Musk demanded that before his deal with the social media platform, the numbers should first be accurately revealed.

He stated, "My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does."

20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.

My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.

Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.

This deal cannot move forward until he does.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

Musk has stated that his team is performing their own analysis on the number of fraudulent accounts on the network. He then tweeted again stating his team will now do random sampling, stating, "To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers of @twitter. I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover."

To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers of @twitter.

I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022

Musk went on further and explained his methods of doing the research. He stated that he would pick any account with a lot of followers and ignore the first 1000 followers, then pick every 10th. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO also stated that he is receptive to new and improved concepts.

In the same way, experts in social media, fake news, and statistical analysis have said that the way he suggested to do more research is completely inadequate.

According to CNBC, Dustin Moskovitz, one of the co-founders of Facebook, chimed in on the discussion via his own Twitter account. He pointed out that Elon Musk's approach is not genuinely random, makes use of too small of a sample, and provides the possibility for significant errors.

He says that a sample size of 100 is much smaller than the average for social media researchers looking at the same issues. This could cause the research to be biased because of how the samples were chosen.

Twitter Bots

Elon Musk's reaction on Twitter to the platform's bots comes as a reaction to the company's current CEO's series of tweets discussing the bots.

As reported by CNN, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal stated that spam accounts do harm to the experience of real people towards the platform, which ultimately becomes a problem in their way of doing business.

He tweeted, "As such, we are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day. Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong."

First, let me state the obvious: spam harms the experience for real people on Twitter, and therefore can harm our business. As such, we are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day. Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

The CEO added that continuously fighting against spam and bots is a bit more challenging than expected. He shared that some spam accounts are not just fully automated. There are a huge number of spam accounts on Twitter where human intervention and automation are combined.

He also added, "We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam - if they can't pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc)."

We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

Agrawal also stated that there are a plethora of accounts on Twitter that, by judging on the outside, look like spam or bot accounts, but in reality, are owned by real-life people. He ended the series of tweets by stating that they don't think this kind of estimation can be done from the outside because it needs to use both public and private information, which we can't give away. And he added, "Externally, it's not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day."

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 on any given day.
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022