As the northern hemisphere prepares to reel into comforts of summer, Twitter employees continue to face cold shivers since the month of March. Such is the nature of the flamboyant billionaire Elon Musk, who has said in a tweet that his $44 Billion deal to acquire Twitter has been put on hold, pertaining to pending details to support Twitter’s claim that only 5% of the platform’s userbase is made up of spam/fake accounts.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
There have been no inside sources confirming the same, so all that exists as evidence is Musk’s own word, which seems to be a viable source only to half of the world’s population. Musk has been vocal about the nuisance of spam bots and fake accounts on the platform, and has conveyed dealing with this problem to be his priority once he assumes control of it.
That’s not to say this couldn’t be anything but what it looks like. Twitter’s share price has been taking a summer splash dip, being down in pre-market trading. It might just be a good old fashioned corporate ‘who lowballs who’ battle. Elon’s word puts the share prices in jeopardy, which could allow him to renegotiate a cheaper deal (Bargaining is not beneath the wealthy elite, it’s a skill.). On the other hand, twitter reporting a lower than actual number for spam accounts would insinuate the platform’s value would be lesser than what Twitter has declared, if a larger percentage of the users are just spam bots.
In the filing last month, which stated the number to be at 5%, Twitter also mentioned the risks of uncertainty they face as long as the deal with Elon is not closed. Advertiser confidence for a platform that does not have a clear direction is certainly a concern.
The corporate structure behind the social media giant known as Twitter continues to shiver from top to bottom. As the employees wait and watch on who their boss is going to be by the end of the year, senior executives are starting to escape the cracks in what looks like a coup d’etat lead by current CEO Parag Agrawal.
