As Parag Agrawal vs Elon Musk battle over 'bots' gets murkier, other bosses jump in; Twitter slams Tesla chief for 'trying to get out of $44 bn buyout deal'

As the battle between Parag Agrawal, the chief executive officer of Twitter and the SpaceX boss Elon Musk got murkier on Monday over spam and bots on Twitter, several other bosses and former associates of the micro-blogging platform jumped in to share their two-bits on the matter.

Ross Gerber, co-founder and CEO, investor advisor, GK ETF, invited Musk for a discussion over how advertisement works on Twitter, stating that he has been an advertiser on the platform in the past.

"Happy to discuss Elon. Been an advertiser on twitter in the past. Know the ad platform very well. Know all the plus and minuses of twitter advertising," he tweeted.

While former COO of Twitter, Anthony Noto, informed the 50-year-old businessman about how he can view the brand advertisement on his Twitter timeline.

"Elon u can see who is doing BRAND ads in ur TL call them & ask. Short answer is traditional brand advertising measurement like MMA, brand survey’s etc. TWTR is well, well past the stage where brand advertisers have either found it to be effective & efficient or not," Noto wrote.

Whereas Damian Bradfield, President of WeTransfer, slammed Musk for his "poop emoji" reply, saying that the fundamental to the financial health of Twitter is intelligent, considered, thoughtful and constructive leadership.

Meanwhile netizens were not too amused with Musk's 'lack of business knowledge', given how desperately he was trying to acquire Twitter.

"Bit weird to do overtly try to get out of the deal by revealing you know nothing about the business you want to buy," wrote a Twitter user under ID @tomcoates, who according to his profile on the micro-blogging site, does product strategy and new product development for companies such as BBC, Nokia, Yahoo and more.

Some also slammed Musk for "trying to get out of deal". Many were especially not happy with the world's richest man's cold reaction to Agrawal.

The Tesla chief ended up being on everyone's radar after he replied to Twitter CEO on the micro-blogging site with a "poop" emoji. In a series of tweets, Agrawal was defending the platform against 'bots and spams' accusation by the aspiring buyer Musk.

"Let’s talk about spam. And let’s do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context … " Agrawal wrote as he began explaining how the platform works.

Twitter chief executive clarified that the platform suspends over a half-million seemingly fake accounts on the platform daily, usually before they are even seen, while also locking millions more weekly that fail checks to make sure they are controlled by humans and not by software.

"We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc)," he said.

Agrawal then mentioned the hard challenge for Twitter, which are the accounts that look fake superficially but are actually operated by real people. "And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface," he added.

In many occasions over the past few months, the billionaire has said that he will be getting rid of bots on priority after he takes control of the platform. However, Musk put the $44 billion Twitter deal on hold asking for details supporting Twitter's claim that spam/fake accounts make up for less than 5 per cent of its users.

But after Agrawal shared the details on Twitter in series of posts, Musk first replied with a "poop" emoji, before asking him "how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money?"

"So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money?" Musk tweeted in a subsequent response about the need to prove Twitter users are real people.


"This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter," he added.

The process used to estimate how many accounts are bots has been shared with Musk, Agrawal said.

According to Forbes, Musk is currently listed as the world's wealthiest person, with a fortune of some $230 billion, much of it in Tesla stock. In April, the Tesla chief surprised many with his plans to acquire Twitter.