The psychodrama between Twitter and Elon Musk continues tirelessly. After the hilarious Tesla boss offered his $44 billion takeover offer in April, and threatened to break the deal in mid-May due to the proportion of fake accounts, the little blue bird finally decided. to take a step towards its acquirer by opening the doors to its data. Presumably, it is a question of forcing his hand.
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The reluctance of Elon Musk
The man is known for his inclinations – some would say that is the hallmark of geniuses. After announcing the takeover of Twitter with fanfare, he quickly expressed his reservations about the proliferation of fake accounts on the network. If the blue bird assures that these represent only 5% of all of its active users, this does not convince Elon Musk, who asked to have access to the data to be able to conduct his own analysis.
The board initially resisted. But after their intrepid buyer filed a complaint with the SEC (the authority of the American financial markets) for “withholding information”, they finally made the choice to reach out to him. In this letter addressed to a lawyer for Twitter, posted online by the SEC, brandished the threat of an outright withdrawal of the deal.
According to an anonymous source close to the negotiations, quoted by the Washington Post on Wednesday June 8, Twitter promises to make available to its potential buyer the complete flow of tweets posted on the network. These are some 500 million daily messages, which should allow Elon Musk to make up his own mind. As a great defender of freedom, but also of data security, he promised not to keep any and not to use any sensitive information.
For the billionaire, the proportion of false subscribers would rather be between 20% and 50%, or several million accounts, reports BFMTV.
Similar to findings from audience measurement firm SparkToro, which estimated 5-30% of Twitter followers are fake on Wednesday, GlobalData, a UK analytics firm, based on a sample of 22,000 tweets, for its part identified a proportion of 10% of fake users on the platform.
Soon the end of the show?
Anyway, this pledge of good faith is a way for the blue bird to push its buyer to make a decision by showing their credentials, while calming the controversy around fake accounts. The company hopes to force him to materialize his offer, which would avoid a new unscrewing on the stock market.
For his part, Elon Musk has only one way out if he wants to retract: to prove that the social network has deceived him, or that a major event has changed its value. Otherwise, he will have to honor his agreement by definitively recording his redemption.