Twitter/@elonmusk
Elon Musk claims to have obtained access to the data from Twitter necessary to complete his $44 billion purchase, but data scientists and industry professionals are sceptical that the stream will yield the solid answers he is looking for regarding the number of fake accounts on the platform.
People with knowledge of the situation stated that Twitter recently gave Mr Musk access to their so-called fire hoses and previous tweet data following some legal battles between the two parties. said this. According to the firm, hundreds of millions of people use the site every day to publish tweets, which are shown in their entirety on one fire hydrant in almost real-time.
The fact that Mr Musk has access to that information may make it easier to complete the transaction. In order to assess the company’s assertions regarding how many of its users are spam or fraudulent accounts, he has stated that the agreement wouldn’t move forward until he could see such data.
Since its inception, Twitter has estimated that spam or fraudulent accounts make up less than 5% of its 229 million monetizable daily active users. Mr Musk has stated that he believes the percentage to be closer to 20%.
Data analysts and social media experts say it is difficult for Mr Musk or anyone else to produce conclusive results quickly that would demonstrate whether or not Twitter’s own estimates of fake and spam accounts are accurate.
This is due to the nature of the fire hose data—both its volume and its limitations. They assert that such estimations could be difficult to compare to those Twitter has made public because Twitter has a special procedure for identifying such accounts.