Elon Musk has responded to Twitter’s suit seeking to force him to follow through on his $44 billion purchase agreement with the social media giant.
In his response to the suit, which includes counter-claims, Musk seeks to justify his exit from the deal, emphasizing the the social media giant has misstated the number of spam-bots on its platform and failed to give him enough data to determine an exact number of bots. He maintains that materially alters the deal he agreed to, and should release him from it.
Musk had originally said he intended to purchase the social media giant in part, to defeat the spam bots.
Musk’s response states that the billionaire’s team did an in-depth analysis of fake and spam accounts on the platform, using Twitter’s “firehose” of data, combined with a public tool called Botometer, created by a team out of the University of Indiana. Although Musk’s response did not detail the process they used, he alleged the evaluation revealed that the number of fake and spam accounts was double Twitter’s assertion. However his team noted their analysis was constrained by time limitations, and a lack of information from Twitter, implying the number might be much higher.
Musk’s response went on to note that the analysis revealed that during the first week of July, spam bots accounted for 33% of visible accounts, as well as about 10% of the monetizable active users, or mDAU. Twitter claims the spam bots account for less than 5% of mDAU.
Musk also claims Twitter is still withholding information, and has not relinquished what his team needs to examine, “the methodology it follows to determine its mDAU count,” as well as other data to examine the company’s value to advertisers.
Musk’s answer states, “Twitter also does not publish the methodology it follows to determine its mDAU count, or how it excludes nonmonetizable accounts from that metric. Thus, it is extremely difficult for any third party to completely recreate Twitter’s mDAU calculations.”
Musk notes Twitter has an incentive to report, “high mDAU numbers to stoke investor interest.”
Twitter has said it does not operate that way, saying in response to Musk’s counter-claims that it looks at mDAU as not how many users generate revenue, but rather as real users who could be monetized. Twitter also claims Musk’s mDAU claims, “are a newly invented litigating position.”
Twitter also claims the issue of bots is moot anyway, and that, “Musk has received massive amounts of information from Twitter, for months, and has been unable to find a valid excuse to back out of the contract.”
