Musk said on Friday that his $44 billion cash purchase deal was “temporarily on hold” while he awaits data on the proportion of his fake accounts.
The executive said his team would test “a random sample of 100 followers” on Twitter to identify the bots. His response to a question prompted Twitter’s accusation.
I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints without you realizing this is happening
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
May 15, 2022
When a user asked Musk to “elaborate on the bot account filtering process,” he replied, “I chose 100 as the sample size number, because that’s what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate." .
Musk tweeted early Sunday morning that he has yet to see “any” analytics showing the social media company has less than 5% fake accounts.
He later said “there’s some chance it’s more than 90% of daily active users.”