Musk challenges Twitter's CEO to an open discussion on fake accounts

San Francisco, Aug. 7 (IANS) Tech tycoon Elon Musk has challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to hold a public discussion on fake accounts and spam amid the continuing legal fight over the $44 billion acquisition plan to purchase Twitter.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted a "excellent explanation of the situation" in response to a user who summarised his complaints, which included Twitter obstructing Musk and providing him with "outdated info" about the microblogging service.

"The transaction should continue under the parameters set forth in the original agreement if Twitter merely reveals how they sample 100 accounts and verify that they are authentic.

 It should not, however, if their Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings are later shown to be substantially incorrect "In a series of tweets, Musk stated.

"I therefore issue a public debate challenge to Parag Agrawal over the Twitter bot percentage. Let him show the general public that less than 1% of Twitter users are false or spam."

The tech tycoon also published a poll for the users of the microblogging site. In the first five hours of the surveys, 66% of users selected "Lmaooo No" to the statement "Less than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam."

Pranay Pathole, a fervent supporter of Musk, criticised the SEC and wrote: "What is SEC doing here, I wonder? Are these questionable assertions made by Twitter ever being looked into?" They should be, so why aren't they? Musk answered.

Musk launched a countersuit against Twitter, and in response, Twitter has provided a thorough rebuttal, claiming that Musk's assertions are "factually wrong, legally inadequate, and commercially irrelevant."  Musk claims that Twitter tricked him into agreeing to a $44 billion merger deal.

"That tale is as unbelievable and untrue as it seems. And that's all it is: a fiction that Musk made up in an effort to get out of a merger deal that he found unappealing when the stock market fell, along with the worth of his enormous personal riches "In a formal response submitted to the Delaware Court of Chancery in the US, Twitter stated.

Twitter answered Musk's attorneys' 90-page counterclaims in the courtroom paragraph by paragraph.

In his counterclaim, the Tesla CEO claimed that Twitter had misrepresented both the state of the business and the "important indicators" the platform used to gauge user engagement.