Twitter will still be sold to Elon Musk, executives at the social media giant said on Thursday – despite Musk’s claim last week that the deal was ‘on hold’ amid his repeated questioning of the company’s user numbers.
Asked initially why he wanted to buy Twitter, the South African billionaire said it was to promote free speech, and that he intended to ‘clean up’ Twitter, and get rid of spam and bots. Then, on Friday, he said that the $44 billion deal was ‘temporarily on hold’ until Twitter could prove that less than 5 percent of its users were fake or spam accounts.
‘This is a big deal,’ he said on Monday at a podcast summit.
‘It seems like if you said, ‘Okay, I agree to buy your house.’ You say the house has less than 5 percent termites. That’s an acceptable number. But if it turns out it is 90 percent termites, that’s not okay. It’s not the same house.’
Musk remains convinced that Twitter’s leadership is not being honest with him about the number of bots, and on Thursday tweeted a meme of an astronaut, labelled ‘Elon’, staring into the abyss and saying: ‘Wait it’s all bots?’
Another astronaut, labelled ‘Twitter Board’, holds a gun to his head and replies: ‘Always has been.’
When CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted a lengthy explanation of the 5 percent figure – which was stated in company documents before Musk made his offer – the billionaire responded with a poop emoji.
On Thursday afternoon, Musk tweeted: ‘To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!
‘Yesterday was Giga Texas, today is Starbase. Tesla is on my mind 24/7.’
He attached the ‘distracted man’ meme, with him distracted by Twitter, while an annoyed Tesla looked on.
‘So may seem like below, but not true,’ Musk said.
Analysts have speculated that Musk may be fixating on the issue of fake accounts as a way of withdrawing from the deal, or driving the price down.
Amid the turmoil, Insider reported on Thursday that SpaceX paid a flight attendant $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Musk in 2018.
The attendant worked as a member of the cabin crew on a contract basis for SpaceX’s corporate jet fleet.
She accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage, Insider reported.
Musk said there is ‘a lot more to this story.’
He added: ‘If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light,’ calling the story a ‘politically motivated hit piece.’
This is an excerpt from The Daily Mail.
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