Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal went on Twitter to post a lengthy thread on bots and spam accounts on the platform, only to receive a poop emoji as a response from SpaceX founder, Elon Musk. Agrawal’s explanation in his 13-tweet thread indicates his rejection of Musk’s claim in regards to the social media giant being chock full of fake accounts.
In his thread, the Twitter CEO noted that “We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter”. He went on to state that the company blocks millions of accounts weekly that may be suspected of spamming, through verification challenges like captchas, phone verification, and other authentication methods.
In spite of his explanation, the platform’s CEO failed to bring up the fact that near the end of April, the company admitted to miscounting its daily users for three consecutive years. What’s more, is that this was the second time it had done so.
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
Evidently, the Tesla CEO didn’t take lightly to Agrawal’s explanation on the matter as he responded with a singular poop emoji. Moments later, Musk followed up with another tweet saying, “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
The debate between the two could cause complications in Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. However, some analysts speculate that this discourse is an attempt for the SpaceX founder to reduce the price in which he must pay to obtain the platform.
The Tesla CEO also stated recently that the deal, with regards to his potential ownership of the site, was on hold as additional research is being conducted to determine whether or not less than 5% of Twitter users are spam accounts, according to the application’s SEC filings statement.
Seeing how Musk’s ownership of Twitter is still far from being a done deal, it is worth mentioning that any altercation of the site according to Musk is but a suggestion, for now. However, Musk has stated that he is still committed to the process of acquisition as posted on his Twitter shortly after his update on the deal being on hold.
(Source: The Verge, Yahoo Finance)
Irfan Iskandar contributed to this article.
