Elon Musk Reaches Limit With Twitter: ‘I hereby challenge Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reached his limit with Twitter and challenged CEO Parag Agrawal to a public debate over the alleged bot problem. Musk also suggested his acquisition deal could still go through if the social media platform revealed how it confirms that sampled accounts are real.
Musk said “If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.
“I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!”
Musk countersued Twitter on Thursday.
According to NBC:
“Attorneys for Elon Musk are claiming in a recent filing that Twitter misrepresented information about the company and its “key metrics,” and distorted its value in an attempt to cause the billionaire to agree to buy the social media platform at an inflated price.
I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage.
Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2022
“The filing alleges fraud and claims Twitter made statements in its Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures that were “far from true” and “contain numerous, material misrepresentations or omissions that distort Twitter’s value.”
“Twitter in its response said its SEC disclosures are accurate and that the company “misrepresented nothing.”
From Yahoo:
During an appearance on the “Full Send podcast,” released Thursday night, Musk said that he got “a lot of backlash,” including from SpaceX competitors, because weed isn’t legal on a federal level and SpaceX has federal-government contracts.
“The consequences for me and for SpaceX were actually not good,” the tech billionaire said on “Full Send,” adding that he hadn’t expected so much criticism.
The 2018 interview with Rogan — which went viral at the time — took place in California, where marijuana is legal for both medical and recreational use.
“I had to have like random drug tests and stuff after that, to prove that I’m not like a drug addict,” Musk said, adding that the tests were required by the federal government.
“They drug tested me for everything, and randomly. It wasn’t like ‘pick a day.’ I had like a whole year of random drug tests.”
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t just me but the whole company, the whole of SpaceX had to have random drug tests,” Musk continued.
It’s unclear exactly how many workers this affected, but SpaceX had around 6,000 employees in early 2019.