Beautiful Virgin Islands

Sunday, Jul 27, 2025

With deal in doubt, Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal debate bots on Twitter

With deal in doubt, Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal debate bots on Twitter

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Elon Musk are engaged in a debate over an issue Musk has made central to his proposed purchase of the platform — spam.

In a series of tweets on Monday, Agrawal laid out Twitter's approach to spam accounts and its challenges dealing with them.

Twitter (TWTR) suspends "over half a million spam accounts every day," Agrawal wrote. He reiterated a longstanding statistic from Twitter that less than 5% of its daily active users are spam accounts — a stat that Musk cited on Friday while announcing that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter was "temporarily on hold."

Agrawal said that estimate is based on "multiple human reviews ... of thousands of accounts" sampled at random, but knowing externally which accounts are counted on any given day is not possible. Twitter has previously acknowledged that while it believes its estimates to be "reasonable," the measurements were not independently verified and the actual number of fake or spam accounts could be higher.

Agrawal's initial 13 tweets were met with a reply from Musk that was reflective of the unusual and extremely online nature of the deal: a poop emoji.

Musk followed up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. "So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money?" Musk asked "This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter," he added.

Musk has repeatedly spoken out against bots and spam accounts on Twitter, once describing cryptocurrency spam bots as the platform's "single most annoying problem." Anyone familiar with the replies to Musk's tweets knows they are full of such scams, many of which attempt to leverage Musk's name.

But some analysts speculate that the world's richest man may be using the debate over bots to drive down the price at which he would have to buy Twitter, whether as a standard negotiating tactic or out of necessity.

Twitter's stock price has erased all its gains in the weeks since Musk disclosed his stake the company and is currently trading at $37.39 per share — well below Musk's offer price of $54.20 per share.

"The bot issue at the end of the day ... feels more to us like the "dog ate the homework" excuse to bail on the Twitter deal or talk down a lower price," Dan Ives and John Katsingris, analysts at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note on Monday.

Musk appeared to add fuel to that speculation on Monday, reportedly saying that a deal to buy Twitter at a lower price wouldn't be "out of the question," while also throwing out his own estimate that at least 20% of all Twitter accounts are fake, according to Bloomberg. Musk didn't say how he came to this number and did not respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.

In his Twitter thread, Agrawal said most spam campaigns on Twitter use a combination of humans and automation, rather than being primarily led by bots. Parsing through legitimate and fake accounts can be complicated, he said.

"The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially — are actually real people," he said. "And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous — and cause the most harm to our users — can look totally legitimate on the surface."

Agrawal said Twitter had been in touch with Musk on the spam issue.

"We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you," he added.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Deputy attorney general's second day of meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell has concluded
Controversial March in Switzerland Features Men Dressed in Nazi Uniforms
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
Thai Civilian Death Toll Rises to 12 in Cambodian Cross-Border Attacks
TSUNAMI: Trump Just Crossed the Rubicon—And There’s No Turning Back
Over 120 Criminal Cases Dismissed in Boston Amid Public Defender Shortage
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
Trump Announces $550 Billion Japanese Investment and New Trade Agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
×