The tycoon assured that his offer to buy the platform was based on the fact that the presentations of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Twitter were accurate.

Billionaire Elon Musk assured this Tuesday, May 17, that his offer of USD 44,000 million to buy Twitter cannot advance until there is evidence on the number of false accounts and spam.

The SpaceX founder tweeted that he estimates that at least 20% of all Twitter accounts, or even more, could be fake or spam accounts, a rate four times higher than Twitter indicated, which was less than 5%. .

He added that his offer to buy the social network was based on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings on Twitter being accurate.

“Yesterday the CEO of Twitter publicly refused to show evidence that (spam or fake accounts) are less than 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does,” Musk tweeted in response to an article shared by Teslarati. , a California-based multi-platform media company that publishes news about Tesla, SpaceX, and companies affiliated with Musk.

The tycoon’s statements came after Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said on Monday that he could not present specific evidence on the figure.

“Let’s talk spam. And let’s do it with the benefit of data, facts, and context… Unfortunately, we don’t think this specific estimate can be done externally, given the key need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share),” Agrawal said in a statement. your personal Twitter account.

The CEO of the social network added that it is not possible to know externally which Twitter accounts are counted as monetizable daily active users on a given day.

“There are a LOT of very important details below this high-level description. We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him and all of you,” Agrawal added.

Musk announced last week that the Twitter deal was temporarily put on hold pending details supporting the calculation of fake or spam accounts that they make up less than 5% of the platform’s users.

Earlier this month, Twitter said it estimates that fake and spam accounts make up less than 5% of its total monetizable daily active users, according to a filing with the SEC.

Following Musk’s announcement to suspend the deal, Twitter shares plummeted on May 13 on the New York Stock Exchange, more than 9.6%, and 8.2% more this Monday.