Ellie Abraham
Jun 09, 2022
The Daily Show
After Elon Musk threatened to pull out of the purchase of Twitter over spam bot accounts, the company has now agreed to provide the data.
The $44 billion deal to buy the social media company looked to be in jeopardy as the Tesla and SpaceX boss expressed concern about Twitter’s lack of transparency around the number of spam and bot accounts.
Musk’s bid to buy the company was put in back in April, but has stalled as the billionaire claimed in a letter to Twitter that it had “refused to provide the information that Mr. Musk has repeatedly requested since May 9, 2022 to facilitate his evaluation of spam and fake accounts on the company’s platform”.
Now, Twitter has confirmed it plans to offer Musk access to its “firehose” of raw data on the millions of tweets posted daily, according to the Washington Post.
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According to reports, it’s hoped the move sill xtop the stall in proceedings as Musk will finally have the necessary data to evaluate the number of bot accounts on the site.
Twitter has claimed for a number of years that bot accounts make up less than five per cent of its overall users, according to data from its own extensive audits.
But other outside researchers have suggested that the true figure may actually be double or even triple that percentage.
With Twitter now offering up this information to Musk, it could prevent him from using the bot issue as a means of stalling the multi-billion dollar sale.
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