"You can't pay the same price for something that is
much worse than they claimed," he said at a conference in Miami.
Musk, who on Friday said his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter
was on hold pending information on spam accounts, said that he suspects they
make up at least 20 percent of users - compared to Twitter's official estimates
of 5 percent.
When asked at the conference whether the Twitter deal is
viable at a different price, Musk responded, "I mean, it's not out of the
question."
"The more questions I ask, the more my concerns
grow," he said at the All-In Summit 2022 conference.
"They claim that they've got this complex methodology
that only they can understand ... It can't be some deep mystery that is, like,
more complex than the human soul or something like that."
Twitter shares extended losses in late afternoon trading
following Musk's comments.
The stock dropped more than 8 percent to close at $37.39
(roughly Rs. 2,900), lower than its level the day before Musk revealed his
Twitter stake in early April, sowing doubts that the billionaire entrepreneur
would proceed with his acquisition of the company at the agreed price.
Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal tweeted
earlier on Monday that internal estimates of spam accounts on the social media
platform for the last four quarters were "well under 5 percent,"
responding to days of criticism by Musk of the company's handling of phony
accounts.
Twitter's estimate, which has stayed the same since 2013,
could not be reproduced externally given the need to use both public and
private information to determine whether an account is spam, he added.
Musk responded to Agrawal's defense of the company's
methodology with a poop emoji.
"So how do advertisers know what they're getting for
their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter," Musk
wrote.
Musk has pledged changes to Twitter's content moderation
practices, railing against decisions like the company's ban of former President
Donald Trump as overly aggressive while pledging to crack down on "spam
bots" on the platform.
Musk has called for tests of random samples of Twitter users
to identify bots. He also said, "there is some chance it might be over 90
percent of daily active users."
Independent researchers have estimated that anywhere from 9
percent to 15 percent of the millions of Twitter profiles are bots.
Twitter does not currently require users to register using
their real identities and expressly permits automated, parody and pseudonymous
profiles on the service.
It does ban impersonation and spam, and penalizes accounts
when the company determines their purpose is to "deceive or manipulate
others" by engaging in scams, coordinating abuse campaigns or artificially
inflating engagement.
Musk's comments to a private audience could add to concerns
about his disclosures of market moving information.
Musk, known for his candid Twitter posts, has a long history
of skirmishes with the US Securities and Exchange Commission; recently, a US
judge slammed him for trying to escape a settlement with the SEC requiring
oversight of his Tesla tweets. © Reuters
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