Twitter officials on Thursday doubled down on defending the accuracy of their calculation of spam on the platform, addressing an issue that has become a potential stumbling block in Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy the company.
The officials, who asked not to be named, reiterated on a call with reporters Thursday that spam accounts make up less than 5% of the company’s daily monetizable users, which Twitter defines as daily users who are logged in and authenticated by Twitter. They added that it would be difficult for outsider auditors to accurately measure the figure that is based on private user information, such as internet addresses, geolocation data and contact information, that Twitter doesn’t share.