YOU AIN’T BACKIN’ OUT
Twitter aims to hold Musk to his $44B buy plan No ifs, ands & bots
Twitter said it would not allow Elon Musk to wriggle out of his $44 billion offer for the social media platform despite the multibillionaire’s threats to walk away if the company doesn’t prove it is sufficiently cracking down on spam and bot accounts.
The San Francisco-based company filed a statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday morning — hours after Musk tweeted he may not proceed with the deal.
“Twitter is committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price,” the company said in its SEC filing.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss agreed to pay $54.20 per share for the site on April 25 but has seen shares plunge by 30%, closing at $38.32 on Tuesday.
Musk faces a $1 billion breakup fee, plus the risk of hefty legal expenses from a breach-of-contract lawsuit, if he scraps the deal.
Twitter’s broadside came after Musk said he will not go through with his takeover unless the social media platform offers definitive proof that less than 5% of its daily users are spam and bot accounts.
“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5% (spam accounts). This deal cannot move forward until he does,” Musk said in a tweet.
Parag Agrawal, the company CEO, took to Twitter on Monday in an effort to refute Musk’s claim that the social media site has allowed spam and bot to run amok.
Spam “harms the experience for real people on Twitter,” he wrote, and the company is “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day.” accounts
“Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong,” Agrawal tweeted.
Musk appeared to be unimpressed, tweeting a poop emoji in response. He then commented: “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
The company has admitted in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that about 5% of its 300 million users are fake.
Musk called on the SEC to investigate Twitter’s assertion on spam after posting a poll on Twitter on Tuesday.
“Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” Musk wrote.
The first option showed two hysterically laughing emoji faces while the second showed a robot next to the words “Who me?!”
20% users fake?
When another Twitter user commented that the SEC should investigate whether Twitter’s claims are true, Musk responded: “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?”
Musk demanded Agrawal show proof or “This deal cannot move forward until he does,” in a separate tweet early Tuesday.
He added: “20% fake/ spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.”
Last week, Musk claimed there is “some chance” the actual number of fake accounts on Twitter “might be over 90% of daily active users.”