Elon Musk Reacts To Former CIA Security Expert's Twitter Bots Estimate: '...This Deal Is Awesome'

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk took a dig at Twitter Inc TWTR on Thursday while reacting to a security expert’s estimate of the spam accounts present on the microblogging site.

What Happened: Musk shared a report from The Australian newspaper that featured former Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau Of Investigation cybersecurity expert, Dan Woods, who has estimated that 80% of Twitter accounts are fake.

Musk said in his Tweet, “Sure sounds higher than 5%!" joking that that on a dollar-per-bot basis this “deal is awesome.”

Why It Matters: In May, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said his company estimated that bots accounted for “well under” 5% of accounts in the preceding four quarters.

Woods said that both Musk and Twitter underestimated the bot issue on the Jack Dorsey-founded platform, Business Standard reported, citing The Australian.

On Wednesday, Musk served Twitter with a second termination letter. The entrepreneur had terminated the $44 billion deal in July, saying the platform failed to provide data on monetizable daily active users.

Twitter has since then sued Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery to force a buyout.

Price Action: On Wednesday, Tesla shares slipped 1.3% to $272.02 in the after-hours trading after closing 0.75% lower at $275.61 in the regular session. On the same day, Twitter shares closed 1.4% lower at $38.77 in the regular hours and rose 0.4% in extended trading, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

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