Twitter CEO defends bot estimates that put Elon Musk acquisition on hold

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal takes a stand against Elon Musk’s concerns about spam and bots on the platform, saying that Musk’s excitation measuring the problem with a random sample of 100 accounts wouldn’t work. “Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters have all been well below 5 percent,” Agrawal wrote on Twitter today. His defense comes after Musk suddenly cast doubt on his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter by tweeting that the deal was “temporarily on hold” over spam concerns.

Musk said the ban was put in place pending details to support the service’s estimate that less than 5 percent of its measured daily active users are bots or spam accounts. In particular, who needed convincing and why remained unclear, and the company’s stock price plummeted amid the confusion.

While Musk hasn’t shared anything more about the status of the deal beyond that tweeting that he’s “still engaged.” On the acquisition, Agrawal further said, “We gave Elon an overview of the estimation process a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him and all of you.” called The company doesn’t believe estimates can be done externally, as even understanding which accounts Twitter counts in its monthly Daily Active Users Report requires private information.

musk answer to Agrawal’s tweet was a single emoji.

According to Agrawal, part of the difficulty in monitoring for spam and bot activity is that many accounts run by real people “look superficially fake.” One thing his thread didn’t mention, however, is that just a month ago, for the second time in its history, Twitter admitted that it had had too many active users for years.

Musk went into more detail on why this estimate is important, saying “So how do advertisers know what they are getting for their money? This is fundamental to Twitter’s financial health.” Elon, in particular, has reportedly told investors that he wants to change Twitter so that it doesn’t rely on advertising money for most of its revenue, and instead derives more revenue from subscriptions.

Speculation following Musk’s tweet Friday morning was rampant, with some suggesting that his goal was to close the deal at a lower price, or perhaps try to find a way to walk away with a $1 billion breakup fee . Whatever the heist and ultimate goal, Agrawal — who fired two top executives the day before Musk’s surprise tweet, saying “we have to be prepared for all scenarios” — seems poised to get behind the company’s reported numbers to deliver.