Elon Musk Replies to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s Thread With Poop Emoji, Netizens React With Memes
Viral News: Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said that his deal to buy Twitter can’t move forward unless the company shows public proof that less than 5 per cent of the accounts on the social media platform are fake or spam. Elon Musk made the comment in a reply to another user on Twitter early Tuesday.
Elon Musk spent much of the previous day in a back-and-forth with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company’s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.
Amid this back and forth with the Indian-American software engineer, Elon Musk replied to one of the last tweets in the thread with just a poop emoji. The tweet has received over 49k likes and 9,000 retweets.
????
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022
In his tweet on Tuesday, Elon Musk said that “20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be much higher. My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.” He added: “Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.” Twitter declined to comment.
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.
My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.
This deal cannot move forward until he does.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
Twitter users were left in splits after they saw Elon Musk’s savage response to Agrawal’s explanation. Many netizens replied with jokes and memes about the Twitter deal. “The merger talks seem to be going well,” a user tweeted sarcastically.
Here’s how netizens reacted to Elon Musk’s reply to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal:
The merger talks seem to be going well
— John W. Rich (Fake Tech Exec) (@Cokedupoptions) May 16, 2022
Dear Parag, I’m surprised that you say that external researchers couldn’t estimate bots. That’s not true. As researcher that worked ~9 years on these topics (I’m the author of one of first independent report about twitter bots) I can say that’s possible. BTW: open your data
— Andrea Stroppa (@Andst7) May 16, 2022
Her text His reply pic.twitter.com/k3A1qSdU10
— R (@StocksThatRips) May 16, 2022
Parag after sending 13 tweets: pic.twitter.com/6zbUKMR6IU
— Mohamed Enieb (@its_menieb) May 16, 2022
@du_du_duh what’s happening
— Bhushan (@kakollu_bhushan) May 16, 2022
Me telling my
feelings.
To my crush. My crush pic.twitter.com/YpjfgTYCYf— Prayag (@theprayagtiwari) May 16, 2022
Disrespectful and violative of the non-disparagement clause but that makes no difference to you does it.
— Richard Signorelli (@richsignorelli) May 16, 2022
It’s Elon Musk’s latest salvo over inauthentic accounts, a problem he has said he wants to rid Twitter of. At a Miami technology conference Monday, Elon Musk estimated that at least 20% of Twitter’s 229 million accounts are spam bots, a percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment, according to a Bloomberg News report.
The battle over spam accounts kicked off last week when Musk tweeted that the Twitter deal was on on hold pending confirmation of the company’s estimates that they make up less than 5% of total users.
Also at the All In Summit, Musk gave the strongest hint yet that he would like to pay less for Twitter than the $44 billion offer he made last month.
He said a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question, according to the report by Bloomberg, which said it viewed a livestream video of the conference posted by a Twitter user.
Musk’s comments are likely to bolster theories from analysts that the billionaire either wants out of the deal or to buy the company at a cheaper price. His tweet Tuesday came in reply to one from a Tesla news site speculating that Musk “may be looking for a better Twitter deal as $44 billion seems too high.”
“Twitter shares will be under pressure this morning again as the chances of a deal ultimately getting done is not looking good now,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who covers both Twitter and Tesla, said in a research note. He estimated that there’s “60%+ chance” that Musk ends up walking away from the deal and paying the $1 billion breakup fee.
Musk made the offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share on April 14. Twitter shares have slid since then and are now down by just over 8%, to close at $37.39 on Monday.
To finance the acquisition, Musk pledged some of his Tesla shares, which have slumped by about a third since the deal was announced.
(With inputs from Associated Press)