Elon Musk Says Twitter Refusing To Cough Up Spam Numbers: They're Being 'Very Suspicious'

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk seems to be tacitly delaying the process of moving forward with his $44 billion offer for Twitter Inc TWTR. 

He is now focusing his attention on digging out how the social media giant handles so-called automated bots. 

During a recent interview, Musk said that fake users make up at least 20% of all Twitter accounts, possibly as high as 90%.   

However, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal responded that spam accounts make up fewer than 5% of total users. 

One of Musk’s followers said that Twitter has made it much more difficult to report spam in a recent Twitter interaction.

Twitter has made it way harder to report spam. It requires more steps and is much slower and harder to read the reasons

as a result i’m reporting spam less. this is not good @elonmusk https://t.co/RftacHkhVw

— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) May 21, 2022

Responding to the follower, Musk said he's concerned that the social media company has financial reasons not to aggressively reduce spam. 

I’m worried that Twitter has a disincentive to reduce spam, as it reduces perceived daily users

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2022

Also Read: Elon Musk On Twitter Algorithm: 'You Are Being Manipulated' And Here's How To Fix It

When one Twitter account holder asked Musk if Twitter had gotten back to him about the real active users, Musk said the company had resisted clarifying the issue. 

No, they still refuse to explain how they calculate that 5% of daily users are fake/spam! Very suspicious.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2022

Last week, Musk mentioned in a Twitter post that unless Twitter shows how this 5% is calculated on a daily basis, he won’t move ahead with the deal. 

20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.

My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.

Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.

This deal cannot move forward until he does.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

Photo: Created with an image from TED Conference on Flickr