May 17, 2022 11:35:00

Elon Musk slams Twitter CEO with poop emoji, criticizes anti-spam policy

On April 26, 2022, Twitter announced that

it had agreed to an acquisition proposal from Elon Musk , but on May 13, it was reported that the acquisition transaction was temporarily put on hold because 'Twitter has 5% of all users with spam or fake accounts.' In response to Musk's tweet criticizing Twitter's anti-spam policy, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal gave an explanation, and Musk expressed his dissatisfaction by replying to Agrawal's tweet with only the poop emoji '💩'.

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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022

It all started with the following tweet by Musk on May 13, 2022. Musk cited an article published by Reuters in the UK titled 'Twitter announces that spam/fake accounts are less than 5% of users,' criticizing, 'Twitter is withholding details to support its calculation that spam/fake accounts are actually less than 5% of users.' If there are actually about 5% spam/fake accounts, it is expected that Twitter's acquisition price will be reduced.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users https://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

In response, Twitter CEO Agrawal responded to the spam issue in a series of more than 10 tweets.

Let's talk about spam. And let's do so with the benefit of data, facts, and context…

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

Because spam is harmful to real users, Twitter detects and deals with spam as much as possible every day, suspending 500,000 accounts a day before they are visible to users, and suspending millions of accounts a week that cannot be verified as human.

We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can't pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

The '5% spam/fake accounts' estimate comes from the fact that randomly sampled accounts are reviewed using IP addresses, registered phone numbers, geographic locations, etc.

Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews (in replicate) of thousands of accounts, that are sampled at random, consistently over time, from *accounts we count as mDAUs*. We do this every quarter, and we have been doing this for many years.

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

Agrawal also said that further details could not be made public due to their personal information, and that he would discuss the details of the spam account estimates with Musk.

Unfortunately, we don't believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can't share). Externally, it's not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day.

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

Musk responded with just a poop emoji, '💩.'

In response to Agrawal's tweet, which read, 'We cannot disclose details publicly as they involve personal information,' Musk criticized the anti-spam policy, saying, 'So how do advertisers know they are getting value for their money?'

So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022