Elon Musk on Saturday took to Twitter to challenge Twitter Inc Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the percentage of bots on the social media platform. Musk wrote in a tweet, “let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!” Elon Musk also started a Twitter poll asking netizens whether less than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam or not.
This development comes as Twitter on Thursday dismissed a claim by Elon Musk that he was hoodwinked into signing a $44 billion agreement to buy the company and Musk filed a countersuit against Twitter on July 29, escalating his legal fight against the company over his bid to walk away from the purchase agreement, according to Reuters report. Earlier on Saturday, Musk said that if Twitter could provide its method of sampling 100 accounts and how it confirmed that the accounts are real, his deal to buy the company should proceed on its original terms, the report said.
Elon Musk said Saturday his planned $44 billion takeover of Twitter should move forward if the company can confirm some details about how it measures whether user accounts are spam bots' or real people, according to AP report.
The billionaire and Tesla CEO has been trying to back out of his April agreement to buy the social media company, leading Twitter to sue him last month to complete the acquisition. Musk countersued, accusing Twitter of misleading his team about the true size of its user base and other problems he said amounted to fraud and breach of contract. Both sides are headed toward an October trial in a Delaware court, the AP report further said.
Twitter has argued in court that Musk is deliberately trying to tank the deal because market conditions have deteriorated and the acquisition no longer serves his interests. In a court filing Thursday, it describes his counterclaims as an imagined story “contradicted by the evidence and common sense. Musk invents representations Twitter never made and then tries to wield, selectively, the extensive confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure a breach of those purported representations,” company attorneys wrote, as per AP report.
(With inputs from AP, Reuters)
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