Musk says there are still a few unresolved matters with Twitter offer

Published Tue, Jun 21, 2022 · 03:56 PM
    • Elon Musk said there are still a few unresolved matters with his Twitter offer including the number of spam users on the system and the coming together of the debt portion of the deal.
    • Elon Musk said there are still a few unresolved matters with his Twitter offer including the number of spam users on the system and the coming together of the debt portion of the deal. REUTERS

    ELON Musk says there are still a few “unresolved matters” about Twitter, and is still waiting for a resolution on the matter of how many bots are on the social media platform.

    “There is the question of, will the debt portion of the round come together and then will the shareholders vote in favour,” Musk added in an interview with Bloomberg news editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha.

    Musk has said he wanted to put the takeover “on hold” while he investigated how many of Twitter’s users are real people, and later filed a formal letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission in which he told Twitter executives he might walk away from the deal if the company didn’t do more to prove the size of its user base.

    Twitter responded by giving Musk access to its full fire hose of public tweets, though it’s unclear if that data is truly helpful in calculating the number of bots on Twitter.

    Musk told the forum he would focus on “driving the product” at Twitter though he doesn’t necessarily plan to be the CEO.

    Musk, the world’s richest person according to Forbes magazine, is trying to buy Twitter for US$44 billion.

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    Musk also said he doesn’t think there’ll be any issue balancing his Tesla interests in China with the future acquisition of Twitter.

    Twitter doesn’t operate in China and “China does not attempt to interfere with the free speech of the press in the US, as far as I’m aware,” he said.

    Musk also praised the work of Chinese firms. “I am very impressed with the car companies in China, just in general companies in China. I think they’re extremely competitive, hard-working and smart,” he said. BLOOMBERG

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