Elon Musk has revealed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter ‘should proceed’, if a key condition is met by the social media giant.
“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,” Musk tweeted in the early hours of Saturday morning. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
The tweet came after Musk accused Twitter of fraud in the countersuit released amid his legal battle with the social media company over his terminated acquisition of the platform.
ELON MUSK ACCUSES TWITTER OF FRAUD, ‘MISCOUNTING’ BOT ACCOUNTS IN COUNTERSUIT
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2022
“Twitter’s own disclosures to the Musk parties show that although Twitter touts having 238 million’ monetizable daily active users,’ those users who actually see ads (and thus, would reasonably be considered ‘monetizable’) is about 65 million lower than what Twitter represents,” Musk’s legal team argued in the court filing.
Musk argued that many of the platform’s monetizable users don’t add to the company’s success due to them not being shown ads. “In fact, the majority of ads are served to less than 16 million users — a mere fraction of the 238 million,” he said.
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Musk was also asked on Saturday morning why the SEC is not investigating Twitter’s claims, to which he replied: “Good question, why aren’t they?”
Earlier this week, Twitter dismissed Musk’s arguments and pointing to its own 127-page response to his countersuit. Musk’s “claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant. We look forward to the trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” tweeted Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor.
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Twitter argues that the two parties are using two different metrics to analyze users. “Musk is not measuring the same thing as Twitter or even using the same data as Twitter,” read the filing. The company also said that Musk is allegedly manipulating his numbers to make his case: “Musk’s ‘preliminary expert estimates’ are nothing more than the output of running the wrong data through a generic web tool. … Confirming the unreliability of Musk’s conclusion, he relies on an internet application called the ‘Botometer‘— which applies different standards than Twitter does and which earlier this year designated Musk himself as highly likely to be a bot.” The Botometer mentioned is a third-party app developed by Indiana University.
