Billionaire Elon Musk challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate on the subject of fake accounts and spam over the weekend.
Musk and Twitter are currently in legal proceedings over a $44 billion takeover offer from the Tesla and SpaceX executive. Musk filed a bid with Securities and Exchange Commission to purchase Twitter in April. After both parties agreed to the deal, Musk made the decision to terminate the deal, accusing Twitter of providing him with incorrect numbers in regards to the amount of daily users that are not spam or bot accounts. In retaliation, Twitter sued Musk to ensure the deal would go through.
A Twitter thread by Andrea Stroppa detailed the allegations made by Musk. Musk replied by saying “Good summary of the problem. If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
Musk later asked followers whether they believed less than 5% of Twitter’s daily users were bots or spam. He later tweeted “I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!”
According to a report from CNBC, a source close to Twitter said a debate “is not going to happen outside of a pending trial”.
