Experts: Elon Musk uses a wrong approach to count spam on Twitter
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, sent Twitter shares to tumble on Friday when he stated that he would put his $44 Billion acquisition of the social network “on hold” while researching the percentage of spam and fake accounts on the platform.
Musk later confirmed that he was still committed to the deal but he kept hammering on the subject of fake accounts. Musk tweeted that his team would conduct their own analysis, and expressed doubts about the accuracy of data reported by Twitter in its most recent financial filings.
Twitter’s first-quarter earnings report this year acknowledged that there were a few “false and spam accounts” on its platform. However, it also noted legitimate daily active users (mDAU) who are legitimately monetizable. According to the company, they had performed an internal audit of some accounts and found that less than 5% of the quarter’s mDAU was made up of spam or false accounts.
Twitter also admitted that it had overstated user numbers by between 1.4 million and 1.9 million over the past three years. Twitter revealed that it launched a feature in March 2019 that allowed users to connect multiple accounts to make it easy to switch between them. An error occurred at that point, so actions made via the primary account led to all linked accounts being considered mDAU.
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