Elon Musk during the event on Thursday, October 10, 2019 at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California, USA.
Bloomberg / Getty
In the middle of his deal to acquire TwitterElon Musk has called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to examine the social network’s user numbers.
Musk, CEO Tesla And SpaceX wrote in an informal Twitter poll on Tuesday, “Twitter claims that 95% of daily active users are real, unique human beings. Does anyone have that experience?” He later responded to a follower who suggested the SEC launch an investigation, saying, “Hello SECGovSomeone at home? “
The SEC has been aware of Twitter’s dark metrics for years.
Musk agreed to buy Twitter last month for $ 44 billion, but said the deal had been put on hold due to bots, spam and fake content. Twitter expects the transaction to take place at an agreed price of $ 54.20 per share.
Investors have poured in shares over concerns that Musk is going to drop his contract, which will force him to pay a $ 1 billion breakup fee. Twitter’s stock has dropped all its profits since Musk first released its 9% stake earlier last month.
Shares of Twitter rose 2.5% to $ 38.33 on Tuesday, down from a close of $ 39.31 on April 1, the last trading session before Musk declared its minority rights.
Within it Filed quarterly funding from this year, Twitter acknowledges that there are many “false or spam accounts” on its platform, legally monetized daily active users or users (mDAUs). The company said that an average of 5% of false or spam accounts during that period represented mDAUs.
Twitter It is acknowledged that the number of users has increased from 1.4 million to over 1.9 million in the last 3 years.
“In March 2019, we introduced a feature that allows multiple separate accounts to be merged together for convenient switching between accounts,” Twitter revealed. “An error occurred at that time. All actions taken by the primary account will be counted as mDAU.”
Musk has repeatedly expressed his disgust with the SEC, including on Twitter October 2018When he called the agency the “Short Vendor Enrichment Commission”, and in July 2020 When he wrote: “SEC, three-letter abbreviation, the middle word is Elon.”
The SEC previously charged Musk with bond fraud in 2018, after he tweeted that he was privately taking his car company for $ 420 a share and that it was “financially secure”. To resolve the issue, an agreement was reached. But Musk has said he is a financial regulator Continuing investigations The amount of harassment.
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