The Twitter boss shared a lengthy statement on the measures taken to combat fake accounts on the social network on Monday, following criticism from Elon Musk, who responded with an emoji in the form of feces.
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The quirky entrepreneur, who had his mind set on buying Twitter and made a $44 billion offer in late April, sowed confusion over his intentions last week, claiming the operation was launched because of his doubts about the real stake in Spam and fake accounts on the platform.
“First, let me state the obvious: spam hurts real people’s experience on Twitter and therefore can hurt our business,” Parag Agrawal tweeted. The social network is therefore “urgently required to identify and delete as much spam as possible” and “anyone who claims otherwise is simply wrong”.
The group bans more than half a million fake accounts every day, and several million users fail certain verification procedures every week, he said, but acknowledged that it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish the legitimate accounts from others.
When Twitter claims that the proportion of fake accounts is well below 5%, this is based on internal data.
“We gave Elon (Musk) an overview of the estimation process a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him and all of you,” Agrawal concludes.
Elon Musk responded to this thread of about fifteen tweets with multiple messages, including a simple emoji depicting a turd with a smile.
He also wondered, “How can advertisers know why they’re really paying? This is a fundamental question for Twitter’s financial health.”
Since submitting his takeover bid, which was accepted by the social network’s board of directors, Mr Musk has shown his desire to make it a bastion of free speech. He also promised to rid Twitter of spam, better authenticate users and increase transparency, without specifying how he intends to do this.
According to the Bloomberg agency present at the event, Mr Musk estimated, speaking via video at a conference on Monday, that fake accounts made up at least 20% of Twitter users.
While the social network’s action dropped significantly after the jump that followed its bid, the entrepreneur also raised the possibility of renegotiating the contract at a lower price.