Musk Gives Twitter an Ultimatum
Twitter shares slumped lower again Tuesday, extending their recent decline to an eighth consecutive session, after Tesla (TSLA) – Get Tesla Inc Report CEO Elon Musk said the social media group must prove that spam and bot accounts comprise only a small portion of its user base for his $44 billion takeover to proceed.
In a back-and-forth with Parag Agrawal yesterday, Musk challenged the Twitter CEO to defend his assertion that the actual number of bots were “well under 5%” over the last four quarters, saying accurate numbers were “fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
Twitter told the SEC earlier this month that the total of fake accounts, often called bots, was under 5% of its 229 million month active users. The Tesla CEO has previously said there is “some chance” the number of fake and bot accounts “might be over 90% of daily active users”, but provided no proof for his assertion.
