Another twist in the dispute between Elon Musk e Twitter. As reported by the New York Times, Tesla’s CEO would have accused of fraud the company due to the number of fake accounts on the platform. A strong gesture, which exacerbates an already very difficult situation in itself, especially after Twitter has decided to bring the entrepreneur to court due to the non-acquisition. So let’s try to understand what happened specifically.
Twitter: Musk accuses the company of fraud
We all know the history of the conflict between Twitter and Elon Musk. After the entrepreneur did not keep his word on acquiring the social media platform, there was a somewhat interesting back and forth between the two sides. The company accused Musk of abandoning the acquisition due to stock market turmoil. And in response the entrepreneur stated that Twitter had hidden the true number of fake accounts. And he accused the company of fraud.
Apparently, Musk’s team claimed that the fake accounts were at least 10% of active users who see advertisements. A concern that the entrepreneur had already raised in April. Although Twitter has always contested this claim, claiming that fake accounts represent less than 5% of daily users on the platform. Indeed, Musk’s lawyers have also claimed that the social network has hidden the number of users who see the ads. According to the filing, during the first quarter of 2022, 65 million of Twitter’s 229 million daily active users were not seeing advertising.
In response to these allegations, Twitter said the entrepreneur was trying to skew the data in his favor. Still, Musk’s team used it Botometer, a tool designed by the University of Indiana, to measure the actual number of bots on the platform, and this turned out to be higher than that claimed by the company. At this point, it would seem that the entrepreneur has all the useful data for an accusation against Twitter. But, as you can imagine, the matter will still be very long and troubled.