Elon Musk suggests reducing Twitter offer by proportion of fake accounts

Elon Musk believes his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter should be reduced in accordance with the proportion of fake accounts on the platform.

He also called Twitter's lack of explanation over these bots "very suspicious".

In agreement with conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong, who tweeted that "If 25% of the users are bots then the Twitter acquisition deal should cost 25% less." Musk replied to the tweet with "absolutely".

Musk has put his deal on hold until the company can prove that 5% of users on the site are bots, reports Business Insider.

In the All-in podcast, he said the figure was "four or five times" higher. A 25% reduction to the current offer would mean the deal would be standing at $33 billion, which is close to Twitter's market value of $30 billion.

When asked on Twitter how the company had responded. Musk tweeted, "No, they still refuse to explain how they calculate that 5% of daily users are fake/spam! Very suspicious."

Musk had already suggested that the calculation be done using a sample of 100 users on Twitter to determine how many were bots. Prag Agarwal, Twitter CEO, had explained to Musk why it wasn't possible, to which he had replied with a poop emoji.