'Twitter has spoken', says Musk as 65% back his claims on fake users in poll

Mumbai: The Twitter-Elon Musk wrangle does not seem to be resolving itself any time soon, with both sides trading charges and counter charges. A Twitter poll by the Tesla CEO has revealed that nearly 65 per cent of his followers do not believe Twitter's claims on the percentage of fake/spam accounts on the platform.

The Tesla CEO conducted the poll on Saturday on whether "less than five per cent of Twitter daily users are fake/spam?" to be answered with a Yes/No. The billionaire triumphantly declared the results of the online poll on Monday: "Twitter has spoken …", disclosing that 64.9 per cent of over eight lakh users who participated in the poll believe that Twitter's claims that less than five per cent of its active users are bots is not true.

Twitter has spoken …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2022

Some of the Twitterati went so far as to accuse the networking giant of trying to hide its actual bot count, with Musk emphatically agreeing to the accusation.

The Tesla CEO is engaged in a fierce legal battle with Twitter after he backed out of his $44 billion acquisition deal, claiming the social media giant did not keep up its part of the deal by disclosing the correct data on spam and bot accounts on the platform. Twitter claims that spam profiles account for only five per cent of its daily active users.

Earlier, Musk challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a "public debate" over the issue of fake accounts on the platform. In multiple tweets, while replying to a follower's tweet summarising the highlights of the $44 billion acquisition offer to buy Twitter, Musk asserted that the social media company's method of estimating spam bots and accounts is flawed and "materially false."