Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a bot debate

Cindy the billionaire Elon Musk provocation Twitter He challenged CEO Parag Agrawal to a “public debate” about fake accounts and spam in the midst of a contentious legal battle over a $44 billion takeover.

Musk submitted an offer to the Securities and Exchange to acquire Twitter back in April of this year. After the companies agreed to go ahead with the private acquisition deal, Musk said he terminated the acquisition, and accused Twitter of providing false numbers, including in its SEC filings, regarding the amount of monetized daily active users, and the number of users. Spam and bot accounts on the social network.

Then Twitter sued Musk in a Delaware court to ensure the deal would go as promised, and Musk filed counterclaims and counters There on July 29th.

In a series of tweets that Musk began posting just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, August 6, Musk Interact with a fan who summarized his accusations about Twitter including that it was stopping and giving it up, “outdated data”, and “fake dataset” when he asked the company for details on how mDAU was scheduled, and estimates for spam and bot accounts.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX wroteA good summary of the problem. If Twitter simply provided a method for sampling 100 accounts and how they were confirmed to be real, the deal should continue on the original terms. However, if their SEC filings turned out to be materially false, then they shouldn’t.

Just before 9 a.m. on Saturday morning, catch Twitter poll started He asks his followers to vote on whether[l]es More than 5% of Twitter users per day are fake/spam. Informal survey participants can choose one of Musk’s answers that reads either ‘yes’ followed by three robot emojis, or ‘Lmaooo no.’ (the colloquial abbreviation ‘lmao)’ means ‘laugh at my voice.’)

See also  The United States is opening a special investigation into the Tesla crash

As Musk wrote Saturday morning: “I’m here to challenge Tweet embed To a general discussion about Twitter bot ratio. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has less than 5% of fake or spam users per day! “

A source close to the company says the debate will not take place outside the pending trial.

Musk’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday, and a Twitter lawyer declined to comment on Musk’s tweets on Saturday.

Twitter lawyers argued in court filings that Musk gave the company only twenty-four hours to accept his offer before submitting it directly to Twitter shareholders, waiving due diligence including an opportunity to obtain more information about fake accounts or spam.

“Musk’s repeated mistakes in describing the merger agreement cannot change its clear words,” they wrote in court filings.

At Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting on August 4, Musk was asked to speak on Twitter during a question-and-answer session that followed a proxy vote.

He saidto laughter from the audience in attendance, “Obviously I have to be a little careful in what I say about Twitter because there’s this suit and stuff.” He stressed that the only traded securities he owns are Tesla and Twitter.

Then he spoke as if he still wanted to become the owner of the social media company, in stark contrast to arguments made by Musk through his attorneys in Delaware legal files in which Musk argues that he should not go ahead with the deal.

At the Tesla 2022 shareholder meeting, Musk said, “I think in the case of Twitter because I use it a lot, I shoot my feet a lot, you know, dig my grave, etc. I think that — I understand the product very well, so I think I have a good idea of ​​where Which the engineering team should direct to Twitter to make it radically better.”

See also  Asia markets mixed after the US reached the debt ceiling agreement; Japanese stocks hit their highest level since July 1990

He added that Twitter would “help accelerate a ‘very great vision’ that had to build a project he had been thinking about since his early years as a tech entrepreneur, X.com or X Corporation.”

He said, “Obviously this can start from scratch, but I think Twitter is going to help accelerate that in three to five years. So it’s the kind of thing that I thought would be very useful for a long time. I know what to do with that. It doesn’t have to be.” You have Twitter for that, but, like I said, it’s probably going to be at least for three years, and I think it’s something that will be very useful for the world.”

Musk did not go into any other details at that meeting. However, he is reported to have said through city hall At a meeting with Twitter employees in June of this year, he wanted to increase Twitter’s user base to 1 billion people and saw Twitter as a platform that could evolve into an app like China’s WeChat, a “super app”, incorporating everything from messaging, video and social media, to payments Mobile and point of sale, with a strong ecosystem of applications.

Unless they reach a settlement first, Twitter and Musk are heading to a five-day trial in Delaware starting on October 17. The judge adjudicating the case is Chancellor Catalin St. J. McCormick.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *