Musk, who has more than 100 million Twitter followers, challenges Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate on Twitter bot
Twitter has disclosed to SEC fewer than 5% of user accounts are fake or spam
Elon Musk said Saturday his planned
$44 billion takeover of Twitter should move forward if the microblogging firm can
confirm details about the way it ascertains if user accounts are 'spam bots' or
real people, according to an AP report.
The billionaire and Tesla CEO has
been trying to back out of his April agreement to buy the social media company,
leading Twitter to sue him last month to complete the acquisition, the report
said. Musk countersued, accusing
Twitterof misleading his team about the true size of its user base and other
problems he said amounted to fraud and breach of contract.
Both sides are headed toward an
October trial in a Delaware court.
"If Twitter simply provides
their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they're confirmed to be real, the
deal should proceed on original terms," Musk tweeted early Saturday.
"However, if it turns out that their
SECfilings are materially false, then it should not."
100-million Twitter followers
Musk, who has more than 100 million
Twitter followers, went on to challenge Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a
"public debate about the Twitter bot percentage."
Twitter declined comment Saturday.
The company has repeatedly disclosed to the
Securitiesand Exchange Commission an estimate that fewer than 5% of user accounts are
fake or spam, with a disclaimer that it could be higher.
Muskwaived his right to further due diligence when he signed the April merger agreement.
Twitter has argued in court that Musk
is deliberately trying to tank the deal and using the bot question as an
excuse because market conditions have deteriorated and the acquisition no
longer serves his interests. In a court filing Thursday, it describes his
counterclaims as an imagined story "contradicted by the evidence and
common sense."
Focus on bot disclosures
"Musk invents representations
Twitter never made and then tries to wield, selectively, the extensive
confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure a breach of those purported
representations," company attorneys wrote.
While Musk has tried to keep the
legal team has been digging for information about a host of tech investors
and entrepreneurs connected to Musk in a wide-ranging subpoena that could net
some of their private communications with the Tesla CEO. (With inputs from AP)
Image credit: AP
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