Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter could go ahead if details on the social media platform’s actual user accounts are confirmed. Musk wants to know how many are ‘spam bots’ and how many are real people. The billionaire CEO of Tesla agreed to buy Twitter in April for $44 billion, but has been trying to back out of the deal since July, accusing Twitter of misleading his team about the true size of its user base and other problems that he said they amounted to fraud. and breach of contract. Twitter sued him last month to complete the acquisition, and Musk fought back. Elon Musk’s Twitter profile displayed on a computer screen and the Twitter logo displayed on a phone screen. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images/Getty Images) The two sides are due to go to trial in October in a Delaware court. ELON MUSK’S REAL BEEF WITH TWITTER REVEALED “If Twitter simply provides the method of sampling 100 accounts and how they are verified as real, the deal should go forward on the original terms,” Musk tweeted early Saturday. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then they shouldn’t.” Musk, who has more than 100 million followers on Twitter, challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a “public debate about the Twitter bot rate.” A sign is pictured outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn/AP Newsroom) Twitter declined to comment Saturday. The company has repeatedly disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission an estimate that less than 5% of user accounts are fake or spam, with a disclaimer that it could be higher. Musk waived his right to further due diligence when he signed the April merger agreement. MASQUE’S COUNTER-SUIT AGAINST TWITTER SAYS HE AND WALL STR OVERLAUGHT: REPORT In the reported details of Musk’s counterattack, he accuses Twitter of intentionally “miscounting” the number of spam accounts it hosts in order to balance its user counts “as part of its plan to mislead investors about the company’s prospects ». Elon Musk, left, and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. (Reuters | Photos Twitter / Reuters) It also claims that Twitter’s reliance on the mDAU metric, or monetizable daily active Twitter users, as a revenue base is itself misleading. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT FOX BUSINESS Twitter responded in a Delaware court filing, calling Musk’s reasoning “a story, concocted in an attempt to get out of a merger deal that Musk no longer found attractive.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.
