Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent Twitter shares tumbling on Friday when he said he was going to put his $44 billion acquisition of the social network “on hold” while he researches the proportion of fake and spam accounts on the platform.
Though Musk later clarified that he remains committed to the deal, he continued to hammer on the issue of fake accounts. He wrote, on Twitter, that his team would do their own analysis and expressed doubt about the accuracy of numbers Twitter has reported in its most recent financial filings.
In its first-quarter earnings report this year, Twitter acknowledged there are a number of “false or spam accounts” on its platform, alongside legitimate monetizable daily active usage or users (mDAU). The company reported, “We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter.”
