Elon Musk Asks Twitter For Explanation Regarding Its Fake Account Metrics

Last time we checked, there was a huge question mark on whether or not the transition of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk was actually going to happen.

Twitter’s CEO tried to reassure so many critics that it would, however, he also did talk about how the company was preparing for all sorts of scenarios. And that means he also had some doubts in his mind.

Soon after that, we saw Musk sending out tweets regarding how he was keenly interested in the ordeal but was taking his precious time to look at all the aspects of the deal including metrics surrounding fake accounts.

The news wasn’t taken too well by Twitter, who had already specified that this is what facts and figures they had and a billionaire raising all sorts of questions certainly had many strongly doubting if Twitter was telling the truth.

Musk has even gone as far as inviting his own fan following to carry out their own experiments and determine if Twitter’s claims of fake accounts being just 5% were valid or not.

While some felt the Tesla owner was just trying to buy more time before the transition, others felt he might be keen on getting a better deal by raising these pointers that make up a strong argument.

Hence, as you can imagine, with all of this chit-chat around, CEO Agrawal was not going to sit quietly. And that’s when we saw the CEO come face to face with Musk’s criticisms in public, providing a justification for everything Twitter has been accused of in terms of their fake accounts.

Firstly, the CEO mentioned that the entire process of detecting bots is undoubtedly not an easy one. And it for sure couldn’t be done from a regular viewer’s perspective.

Agrawal shed light on how some spam campaigns are so advanced that they combine human skills with automated efforts. Furthermore, they destroy real accounts to gain benefits and move ahead with their campaigns. And the hardest part is that those that appear fake may end up being true and vice versa.

After that, the Twitter CEO highlighted how the company continuously updates its systems as well as policies to rid spam while making sure they’re not removing real people along the way. Nobody wants to deal with unnecessary friction when they’re avidly making use of the platform.

Therefore, it makes sense that you can’t just sit there and begin to randomly figure out which accounts are fake isn’t possible. And that is where Elon Musk’s argument came into play.

The billionaire mentioned how counting systems like the CAPTCHA could be used to verify accounts. But again, Twitter’s CEO says it’s not as easy as it seems. Twitter uses a policy that includes a checklist that determines which data is real and which isn’t. And that means there are a huge number of elements that finally give out the conclusion, which cant be seen through the simple use of an eye test.

Furthermore, we saw the Twitter CEO justify how the company is involved in the quarterly analysis of spam accounts and human reviews from suspicious accounts. They are randomly sampled each year and that’s a part of the firm’s regular practice.

But that was a very interesting point because Musk says the company only looks at a mere 100 accounts as samples to get an estimated figure. The Tesla owner sent out a shocking tweet where he publicly disclosed how Twitter’s legal team is bashing him for violating the company’s NDA, where the bot sample size was ticked as being just 100.

What’s interesting is how a huge deal worth billions is being surrounded by controversies relating to simple misinterpretations. Clearly, the back and forth arguments are interesting for the world to witness because very rarely if ever do things like these get highlighted in the public eye.

As it is, there is great skepticism about Musk transforming Twitter into a machine that continuously hands out money. However, there are also those running in favor of Musk, adding how the number of fake accounts for such a huge social network can’t be so low.

Similarly, in wake of the argument, we saw SparkToro unveil its own analysis that showed figures of fake accounts to reach a staggering 19%. Maybe, Twitter is actually bending the truth to run in its own favor.

Musk recently released another interesting tweet. Here, he says that a key aspect of Twitter’s overall health is knowing what advertisers are getting in return for the money they’re investing in. And that can be done seamlessly if you give them data to work with, including actual figures of bots or spam accounts.

Now, the real question is what will happen in terms of the grand Twitter takeover. Can Elon Musk back down, in case he shows the world that CEO Agrawal isn’t correct? Well, we certainly don’t think so. But what could happen is Musk gets a really great deal at the end.


Read next: Elon Musk Took To Twitter In An Attempt To Draw More Of The Platform’s Userbase Towards Using The Chronological Timeline
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