Venture capitalist: Elon Musk could close Twitter deal at a lower price due to fake accounts

05/23/2022 / By Belle Carter

Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and longtime investor in Elon Musk’s companies, believes the billionaire could close the Twitter deal at a lower price.

“I think he’s going to get a better deal because he found out that, two-thirds [of users] are bots or something,” Draper said.

Twitter officially accepted the $44 billion offer from Musk in April, but the Tesla CEO has since paused his takeover bid because of concerns related to fake accounts and spam.

The deal was temporarily on hold pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts just represent less than five percent of the users. Musk later confirmed that he was “still committed” to buying the social media platform.

Subsequently, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal posted the steps the company is taking to take down the fake accounts.

“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 [monetizable daily active users] on any given day,” Agrawal tweeted. (Related: FAKED CONSENSUS: Elon Musk suggests up to 90% of Twitter users are BOTS, not humans.)

Musk later responded with a smiling poop emoji.

Some analysts say that Musk is using the spam issue as a negotiating tactic. But Draper, a longtime bitcoin bull who has also invested in Skype and Coinbase, thinks Musk will go forward with buying Twitter regardless because he believes in free speech.

Conservatives back Musk’s Twitter deal

The conservatives who were mostly shadow-banned and blocked on the heavily-censored Twitter over the years rejoiced when the news broke that Musk is buying the communications company.

Following the buyout announcement, conservatives tested the waters by posting comments on the legitimacy of the 2020 election; slamming public health experts for lying about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19); extolling the virtues of heavily-suppressed coronavirus treatments hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin; and debunking transgenderism.

One of them was Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the first woman to represent Tennessee in the Senate. “This is a great day to be conservative on Twitter,” she tweeted.

The Daily Wire‘s Michael Knowles also experimented with the new moderation rules posting a series of tweets expressing mainstream conservative opinions that might have gotten him booted from the platform just a day earlier.

“The 2020 presidential election was obviously rigged,” he said and then added in another tweet, “Public health officials lied repeatedly about COVID-19.”

“Ivermectin is a wonder drug,” the podcaster also shared. He also tweeted that contrary to the opinions of activists and experts, “transgenderism isn’t a real category of being.”

Erick Aguilar, a Republican congressional candidate in Florida, checked “Twitter freedom” by posting six controversial statements: “I’m testing the Twitter freedom. 1. Ivermectin works. 2. Hydroxicloriquine works. 3. Vaccines are ineffective. 4. Masks don’t work. 5. Boosters are killing people. 6. Dr. Malone and Joe Rogan are heroes. Let’s see if Elon keeps his word. Retweet if you agree,” he said.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was kicked out of the platform for agreeing with a statement that a man who claims to be a woman is still a man, has already regained his account, same with the news company’s radio show host Mark Levin.

Musk, a free speech advocate, believes that Twitter has tremendous potential and is looking forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it. “I want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” he said.