Stock market analysts agree that Musk’s attempt delay the deal to purchase Twitter was a ploy to get a lower price. His proposed statistical method for analysing 100 accounts is not statistically valid.
Elon Musk justification for his decision to use a 100-account sample was the fact that Twitter uses this number during its internal audit. Reuters explains that this has caused discontent among Twitter lawyers since Musk’s statements regarding the calculation methodology violated a confidentiality contract between the company and him.
The analysis’s ultimate goal is to identify fake and duplicate accounts. It also identifies those that are used to spread advertising information. Twitter initially stated that they had a share of 5% of the active audience. CNBC’s resource indicates that this context is facing many challenges.
Twitter stated that it had received an inaccurate impression of its active users over the last three years at its quarterly reporting event. One user could switch between multiple accounts using a new function in March 2019. These accounts can all be counted as unique in the statistics. According to the statistics, there were 1.4 to 1.9 millions users who accumulated errors.
Second, experts point out that 100 accounts is not enough to determine the percentage of fake accounts. BotSentinel analyzes more than 2.5 million Twitter users in English to determine the percentage of fake accounts. It estimates that this number is between 10 and 15%. It is important that you understand that this percentage can increase in certain branches when it comes to controversial topics like politics, climate change, pandemic, and cryptocurrency. However, bots are less prevalent in the areas of pets and other harmless hobbies.
Statisticians agree that it is necessary to have a larger sample than the 100 accounts the Elon Musk team will be using to identify spam and bots on Twitter pages. Experts think this whole approach is absurd, so it might not be related directly to Musk’s decision to halt preparations of the deal. Some sources believe that the likelihood of the deal falling on current terms is up to 60% based upon the reaction of stock markets.