Musk requests that the SEC investigate the amount of fake Twitter accounts

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has suggested that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should investigate whether Twitter's internal estimate that spam and fake accounts make up less than 5% of users on the social media platform is accurate.

Elon Musk has requested that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigate the amount of phony Twitter accounts. According to reports published on Tuesday, the CEO of SpaceX has asked the agency to resolve his issue with Twitter executives on the number of bots and bogus accounts.

Musk also conducted an informal Twitter poll asking followers if they trust the company's assertion that 95% of its accounts are "human."

Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

This was after Musk had put his purchase of Twitter on hold due to a disagreement over the amount of fictitious accounts that were created. After claiming at least 20% of Twitter accounts are fake, he's stated that he could be willing to pay less than the reported $44 billion for the service.

In April, Twitter agreed to buy and take private the company for $44 billion from Elon Musk at a price of $54.20 per share. The acquisition has been put on hold while Twitter gathers more information to back up its claims about spam and fraudulent accounts.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, at least 20 percent of Twitter's users are bogus and spam accounts. That number "might be *much* higher,'" he subsequently tweeted.

I made my offer supposing all of Twitter's SEC documents were correct, and I stand by that. "Despite repeated requests, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has declined to provide evidence of the alleged 5% ownership. It's impossible to move forward with this arrangement until he does."

To put it another way, in the first three months of 2022, Twitter's monetizable daily active user (mDAU) base climbed by 15.9 percent year over year, with 39.6 million daily active users in the United States and 189.4 million daily active users worldwide.

To assess the amount of spam and fraudulent accounts on the site, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said in a lengthy Twitter thread on Monday that it would be impossible to carry out an external examination, although he did not elaborate.

It is difficult for us to suppose that this estimate can be produced externally due to the necessity of utilizing both public and private information (which we are unable to divulge)." Externally, it's impossible to tell which accounts are classified as mDAUs on any particular day.

On the basis of "many human assessments (in replicated) of thousands of accounts, that are picked at random, continuously over time," Agrawal reaffirmed his estimate of less than 5%.

As he went on to explain, "Each human review is based on Twitter rules that define spam & platform manipulation & uses both public and private data (eg. IP address & phone number & geolocation) to make a judgement on each account" (emphasis his).

In the event that Musk's deal is approved by shareholders and regulators, as well as other usual closing conditions, it is projected to close in 2022. Twitter shares, on the other hand, are currently trading at a discount to Musk's bid.

A default by Musk would result in him paying a $1 billion breakup fee and maybe being sued for extra damages. It's not out of the idea that Twitter may be sold at a lesser price, according to him at the All In conference.

While he has claimed he will take action against spambots, the self-described "free speech absolutist" has also expressed interest in open sourcing Twitter's algorithm in order to improve transparency with its users.

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