Musk conducts poll on Twitter bot numbers amid purchase deal lawsuit

Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, carried out a Twitter poll on the platform’s bot numbers, asking “Less than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam”. 

Typical of the billionaire’s sense of humour, the poll is skewed, since the options are “yes” with a series of bot emojis placed next to it, and “lmaooo no”. 

The 51-year-old’s poll suggests that those who click on “yes” are bots themselves, and those who know the reality are bound to click on no and have a laugh about it. Musk has maintained that Twitter has a number of bots on the platform and has asked for an accurate count before his $44 billion deal to acquire the social media company can go forward. 

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Twitter has sued Musk for backing away from the deal and amid the kerfuffle, the billionaire has also called for a debate on Twitter bots. This issue has been a hurdle to the completion of the agreement, and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tried to explain things in a thread conversation on the social media platform. However, Musk didn’t go for it, believing that the valuation would differ based on the number of real users and bots. 

The entrepreneur is known to conduct polls often, on hot topics, to get feedback from his followers. 

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A Twitter user commented below sharing a meme of Agrawal hiding while the judge and Musk gang up on him from two sides. It indicates that Twitter is trying to hide the number of bots on the platform, but the count is bound to come out as part of evidentiary hearings in the lawsuit the social media company has brought against the world’s richest man. 

Musk replied with a “100”, indicating his complete agreement with how the situation was likely to play out. Notably, when Musk had asked Twitter to make their bot numbers public before, the social media company refused, saying it was an impossibility.