Elon Musk cited for calling Twitter deal ‘on hold’ behind fake-account issue
by Sarah E. Needleman | UPDATED May 15, 2022 07:00 AM EDT
Social media has been battling fake accounts for years, raising questions about why the Tesla chief is now talking about them again
Elon Musk’s tweet that said his planned Twitter Inc acquisition had been put on hold came under fire over questions about fake accounts that have plagued the social-media platform for years.
Tesla Inc.’s chief executive, Mr. Musk, said in a tweet early Friday that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter “supports the calculation of “temporarily pending details that spam/fake accounts are actually 5%”. represent less than one user.
Spam and fake accounts are an industrywide challenge. They may harm the experience of legitimate users, who may see posts they do not realize are generated by computer programs or otherwise under false pretense. Operators of “bots” use automated fake accounts to incite violence, spread false information, influence political activity, or make deceptive attempts to achieve other illegal goals. And fake accounts can make it harder for advertisers on social-media platforms to determine what they’re getting. for their money.
The companies behind Twitter and rival platforms like Facebook and YouTube have spent years trying to stamp them out. Companies have expanded content-moderation teams and used artificial intelligence, but many describe spam and fake accounts as a strange problem because bad actors are constantly updating their methods.
Mr Musk—challenging Twitter’s count on spam and fake accounts—provided no evidence that the company’s disclosures on the matter were unreliable. In tweeting that his deal for Twitter was on hold, Mr. Musk included an article referring to a recent regulatory filing from Twitter in which he reiterated that such accounts account for more than 5% of his monetizable daily users. represent less. Year. Mr Musk later said he was committed to the acquisition.
Twitter reiterated previous statements, including that the 5% figure is based on a sample and that “the actual number of false or spam accounts may exceed our estimates.” The company, which in total had about 229 million daily active users as of March 31, did not say how many fake accounts were active.
Late Friday, Mr Musk tweeted again, saying he would try to check the figure and urging others to do the same: “To find out, my team is a team of 100 followers of @twitter. Random sampling will do. I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they find.”
Mr Musk then responded to the questions, explaining his thoughts going forward, tweeting: “If we try to figure out bot/duplicate user percentages collectively, we can probably crowdsource a good answer. “
Asked on Twitter whether he had thought about the issue before making his $44 billion purchase commitment, Mr Musk said: “I relied on the accuracy of Twitter’s public filings.”
Twitter’s revelations about its share of spam and fake accounts have been frequent over the years, and outlined the measures the company took to address the issue. In its latest Transparency Report, a roundup of user-data and other statistics that many large social-media companies release regularly, Twitter said that user reports of spam grew nearly 10% to 5.1 million in the first half of 2021 . Half of 2020. It said users submitted 29.8 million spam reports between January 2018 and June 2021.
Twitter has not disclosed details about the impact of spam and fake accounts on its platform. “They may tweet just once or a hundred times a day,” said Joseph Seering, a Stanford University researcher who studies content moderation.
Mr Musk’s remarks further fueled speculation that he may try to negotiate a lower sale price or walk away from the deal. Twitter shares are now trading down amid widespread market volatility after it made its unsolicited offer to the company last month. It could not be determined what his role, if any, was in Friday’s initial tweets, or why he is now raising the issue of fake accounts in connection with the transaction.
Mr Musk has previously flagged the presence of spam and fake accounts as a concern. As part of his bid to buy the platform, he tweeted that such accounts damage user trust.