TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Tuesday, Jun 06, 2023

Elon Musk wants a 25% discount on his Twitter bid if 25% of Twitter's users are spam bots - are they?

Elon Musk wants a 25% discount on his Twitter bid if 25% of Twitter's users are spam bots - are they?

The billionaire, who claims to be spending less than 5% of his time on the $44bn takeover, has made a number of comments in recent weeks criticising Twitter - and has clashed with its chief executive over how the bot count is established.

Elon Musk has expressed support for receiving a discount on his Twitter bid equal to the percentage of users who are spam bots.

The billionaire, who claims to be spending less than 5% of his time on the $44bn takeover, has made a number of comments in recent weeks criticising Twitter and its management team.

Mr Musk recently said the acquisition was temporarily on hold as he wanted to confirm the company's own figures that accounts not operated by real humans represented less than 5% of users.

Responding to the suggestion that "if 25% of the users are bots then the Twitter acquisition deal should cost 25% less" he wrote: "Absolutely."


So what is the argument really about?


Mr Musk has claimed that much higher than 20% of accounts on Twitter could be "fake/spam" and said that his offer to acquire the company was based on Twitter's own reports being accurate.

He criticised Parag Agrawal, Twitter's chief executive, for publicly refusing "to show proof" that less than 5% of accounts were "fake/spam" and wrote that he was "worried that Twitter has a disincentive to reduce spam, as it reduces perceived daily users".

Mr Agrawal had written a fifteen-post thread denying this incentive and explaining that Twitter actively attempts to reduce spam accounts; suspending over half a million spam accounts every day and locking millions of accounts each week that can't pass human verification challenges.

The chief executive did not point out that if Mr Musk is to receive a discount on his bid proportionate to the number of user accounts that are considered "fake/spam" then Mr Musk himself is incentivised to inflate that figure.

Musk replied with a pile of poo emoji and asked: "So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter."

Mr Musk proposed users conduct their own test to see if they could see if accounts were authentic or not, although Twitter cautioned that it was not possible for external observers to identify whether an account was run authentically by a human or was either automated or part of a platform manipulation campaign.

Twitter shares below the level seen in early April when Musk first revealed his Twitter stake


In an official blog post the company said: "We permanently suspend millions of accounts every month that are automated or spammy, and we do this before they ever reach an eyeball in a Twitter Timeline or Search."

But this captures two different kinds of fake account, one of which is a bot - a completely automated account - which is not banned on Twitter, as well as inauthentic accounts designed to contribute to manipulating the platform.

The bot account @pentametron for instance attempts to automatically identify and retweet any messages that are written in iambic pentameter without any human intervention. It is a bot but it is openly one and is not "fake".

"The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially - are actually real people," warned Mr Agrawal, noting that just because an account has a platform-generated username and profile picture that does not mean it is not being operated by a real person.

"And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous - and cause the most harm to our users - can look totally legitimate on the surface," he added.

Twitter has previously identified and banned more than 23,000 fake accounts operated by real humans connected to the Chinese Communist Party as part of a propaganda network.

Musk appears to be using the issue as a way to force down the agreed price for the takeover - with Twitter's shares suffering amid the acrimony being played out in public.

The company signalled last week that it would not look to backtrack on the $44bn price through a statement filed with the SEC which said: "Twitter is committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable."

Musk told a conference in Miami last Monday: "You can't pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed. The more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow.

"They claim that they've got this complex methodology that only they can understand... It can't be some deep mystery that is, like, more complex than the human soul or something like that."

Mr Agrawal said: "Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews (in replicate) of thousands of accounts, that are sampled at random, consistently over time, from accounts we count as [daily active users]. We do this every quarter, and we have been doing this for many years.

"Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5% - based on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter," he added.

AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
Close
0:00
0:00
Nvidia Joins Tech Giants as First Chipmaker to Reach $1 Trillion Valuation
Drone Attack on Moscow's Wealthiest Neighborhoods Suspected to be Launched by Ukraine
AI ‘extinction’ should be same priority as nuclear war – experts
Prominent Hacker Forum RaidForums Suffers Substantial Data Breach
Nvidia CEO Huang says firms, individuals without AI expertise will be left behind
WPP Revolutionizes Advertising with NVIDIA's AI Powerhouse
Two US Employees Fired For Chasing Robbers Out Of Store As They Broke ''Company Policy''
If you donated to BLM, you got played
Pfizer, the EU, and disappearing ink - Smoke, Mirrors, and the Billion-Dose Pfizer Vaccine Deal: EU's 'Open Secret
Actor Tom Hanks told Harvard University graduates to be superheroes in their defense of truth and American ideals, and to resist those who twist the truth for their own gain
The Sussexes' Royal Rebound: Could Harry and Meghan Markle Return to the UK?
A provocative study suggests: Left-Wing Extremism and its Unsettling Connection to Psychopathy and Narcissism
France Arrests 10 on Suspicion of Failing to Respond in Time to Migrant Drowning
Neuralink Receives FDA Approval for First-in-Human Clinical Study
Is Saudi Arabia the holiest place in the world? Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions from "The Mount Sinai Stand" Discovered in Saudi Arabia
Ukrainian Intelligence Official Admits to Assassination Attempts on Putin
Bernard Arnault Loses $11.2 Billion in One Day as Investors Fear Slowdown in US Growth Will Reduce Demand for Luxury Products
Russian’s Wagner Group leader: “I am not a chef, I am a butcher. Russia is in danger of a revolution like in 1917.”
TikTok Sues Montana Over Law Banning the App
Ron DeSantis Jumps Into 2024 Presidential Race, Setting Up Showdown With Trump
Last Walmart in North Portland Closing Down
Florida's DeSantis seeks to disqualify judge in Disney case
Talks between US House Republicans and President Biden's Democratic administration on raising the federal government's $31.4tn debt ceiling have paused
Biden Administration Eyeing High-Profile Visits to China: The Biden Administration is heating things up by looking into setting up a series of top-level visits to Beijing by top officials in the coming months
New evidence in special counsel probe may undercut Trump’s claim documents he took were automatically declassified
A French court of appeals confirmed former President Nicolas Sarkozy's three-year jail term for corruption and influence peddling
Debt Ceiling Crises Have Unleashed Political Chaos
Weibao Wang, a former software engineer at Apple, was charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars
Mobile phone giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 jobs globally over three years as new boss says its performance not good enough
Elon Musk compares George Soros to Magneto, the supervillain from the Marvel Comics series.
Warren Buffett Sells TSMC Shares Over Concerns About Taiwan's Stability
New Study Finds That Secondary Bacterial Pneumonia Is a Major Cause of Death in COVID-19 Patients Who Require Ventilator Assistance
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines calls the British monarchy "an absurdity" he wants to remove in his lifetime
King Charles III being crowned.
'Godfather Of AI' Geoffrey Hinton Quits Google To Warn Of The Tech's Dangers
A Real woman
Vermont Man Charged with Stalking After Secretly Tracking Woman with Apple AirTag
Elon Musk Statements About Tesla Autopilot Could Be 'Deepfakes,' Lawyers Claim. Judge Evette Pennypacker Does Not Understand How Far and Advanced This Technology Became
Ukraine More Prepared for Counterattack as Reinforcements Arrive
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Discuss Migration, Defence, and Ukraine
AT&T's Successful Test of Satellite-Based Phone Call Raises Possibility of Widespread Coverage
CNN: "Joe Biden is asking for four more years — when 74% of Americans think the country is heading the wrong way“
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Cuts Short Live TV Interview Due to Health Issue
US Congresswoman threaten Twitter Files journalist with arrest
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh slams New York Times' pro-government stance and treatment of sources
Enough is enough: it's time to end the war in Ukraine. While Russia may be to blame for starting it, Russia is not the one refusing to stop it
Fox News Settles their case with Dominion Voting Systems for a staggering $787.5 MILLION
AG decries scapegoating and rushed lawmaking by government
The land of the free violence
21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested for leaking classified Pentagon Documents
×