Owning Twitter is difficult as the platform faces regulatory scrutiny and is embroiled in a debate about freedom of expression online. Its business has also struggled, especially in a competitive market for digital advertising. After Mr. Musk signed the acquisition agreement, Twitter reported 16% revenue growth in the first quarter, lower than the 20% it had predicted.
Within weeks, Mr. Musk tweeted that agreement has been kept, says he wants more details on the number of spam and fake accounts. At one point, he speak Reaching a deal for Twitter for a lower price is “not out of the question.” He also replies to tweets from Parag AgrawalTwitter’s CEO, who detailed how the company detects and fights spam, with a poop emoji.
Behind the scenes, Twitter continues to allow Musk and his team to access information about its platform, people with knowledge of the situation said. Last month, the company agreed to allow Mr. Musk direct access to its “firehose”, stream of millions of tweets daily flowing through the company’s network. Twitter, which says about 5% of its accounts are spam since it went public in 2013, also says the number is just an estimate.
Even so, the number of fake accounts remains a concern for Mr. Musk. For years before the proposed acquisition, he complained about spam on Twitter and said the company should do more to authenticate its users. In 2020, he appeared at a Twitter employee event and said the company should do more to prevent spam.
Last month, in a six-paragraph letter, Musk’s lawyers have asked Twitter for more information about its methods of counting fake accounts, and claimed that the company is “actively resisting and obstructing” his rights. They said the company “rejected Mr. Musk’s request for data” to reveal the number of fake accounts on its platform. The lawyers went on to argue that it resulted in a “clearly serious breach” of the agreement, saying it gave Mr Musk the power to rescind the agreement.
On Thursday, Twitter said it had stepped up efforts to detect and block spam after Russia used fake accounts to influence the 2016 US presidential election. new to its application process and said it used an auditor to check the number of its spam accounts. They also said they deleted a million spam accounts every day and locked millions more each week until the people running these accounts passed anti-spam tests.
