Musk and Twitter CEO Tussle Over Prevalence of Spam Accounts
- Agrawal says it’s hard to measure spam from the outside
- Musk replies with poop emoji to Twitter CEO’s tweet thread
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Elon Musk sparred with Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal over over the prevalence of spam bots on the platform, with the company’s would-be owner saying the number is far higher than acknowledged.
Musk, who has agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, said last week that he was putting the deal “on hold” until he had more information about how the company measures bot accounts. The billionaire said Monday that he estimates at least 20% of Twitter accounts are actually spam. In a Twitter thread, meanwhile, Agrawal said the number is less than 5% when measuring daily users -- a figure the company has previously cited in quarterly filings.