Elon Musk’s Twitter Purchase At Risk

The purchase of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk is at risk, according to a report this Thursday (7) published by the Washington Post. Citing anonymous sources close to the negotiations, the newspaper claims that the businessman’s team has concluded that the number of fake accounts provided by the social network is not verifiable.

The existence of these spam accounts is one of the main obstacles to completing the $44 billion deal.

According to the Washington Post, the billionaire’s team has stopped getting involved in some discussions about funding the social network’s purchase deal, and is expected to change direction soon.

Musk is expected to take drastic action after the conclusion that the numbers are unverifiable, according to the sources. To back out of the deal, Musk must pay about $1 billion.

Also this Thursday (7), Twitter said that it removes more than 1 million accounts considered spam daily from its platform.

The company explained its policies to combat platform manipulation and the calculation of so-called monetizable users daily, those who are active on the platform.

In May, Musk tweeted that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal refused to show evidence that less than 5% of accounts on the social network are fake. “The deal cannot move forward until he does this,” he wrote.

At the time, Agrawal said that internal analysis showed that less than 5% of active accounts are classified as spam. This estimate, however, could not be verified externally because of the need to use public and private information, which the company could not share.

Musk responded to Agrawal’s explanation, posted on Twitter, with a feces emoji. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk then asked. “This is critical to Twitter’s financial health,” he added.