Highlights
- Elon Musk and Twitter are engaged in an ongoing legal dispute over the $44 billion takeover deal
- Musk's challenge to Parag Agrawal came while responding to a Twitter user
- Musk has been insisting Twitter to provide complete data on bot and spam accounts
Elon Musk has challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to have a public debate on fake accounts and spam on the social media platform. The development comes amid an ongoing legal dispute over the $44 billion takeover deal to buy Twitter.
Musk wrote a 'good summary of the problem' while responding to a user on Twitter.
In his accusations, the Twitter user wrote, "Elon Musk's counterclaim suit against Twitter. Clearly, from Twitter SEC filings, mDAU is the key metric. It is the key metric for its business rev. And its market value; mDAU is an ad hoc metric, created to protect Twitter's interests. No competitor uses something similar."
"If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they are confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings are materially false, then it should not," Musk said in a series of tweets.
"I hereby challenge Parag Agrawal to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has lesser than per cent fake or spam daily users!" Musk wrote.
Meanwhile, Musk's die-hard fan Pranay Pathole called out SEC and wrote: "I wonder what's SEC doing here? Are they even investigating these dubious claims that are made by Twitter?"
"Good question, why aren't they?" Musk replied.
Twitter has filed a detailed response to Musk's countersuit against the micro-blogging platform, saying his claims are "factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant".
According to Musk, he was hoodwinked by Twitter into signing a $44 billion merger agreement.
"That story is as implausible and contrary to fact as it sounds. And it is just that -- a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive once the stock market -- and along with it, his massive personal wealth -- declined in value," Twitter had said in its legal response filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery in the US.
Musk's lawyers filed 90 pages of counterclaims in the court, and Twitter responded to them paragraph by paragraph.
The Tesla CEO, in his countersuit, said that his action arose out of Twitter's misrepresentations regarding the condition of the company and the "key metrics" the platform uses to evaluate the number of its users.
(With inputs from IANS)
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