Speaking at the recent "All In" summit, Musk clarified that buying Twitter is "not out of the question" if the company will agree to sell it to him for a much lower price based on the fact that its true user base of actual human beings is much smaller than claimed.
Musk also questioned Twitter's public filings, casting doubt on their truth and accuracy.
"Twitter's choice: admit Musk is right and it has a huge fake userbase, opening up existing management to countless shareholder lawsuits, or kill the deal and be sued for record shareholder value destruction," tweeted Zero Hedge.
Trump chimes in, says buying Twitter at the current price is "ridiculous"
Donald Trump tweeted about Musk's offer to buy Twitter as well, calling it "ridiculous" in light of the company's current price.
"There is no way Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter at such a ridiculous price, especially since realizing it is a company largely based on BOTS or Spam Accounts," the former president wrote in his usual format of capitalizing random words that should not be capitalized.
"Fake anyone? By the time you get rid of them, if that can even be done, what do you have? Not much?" Trump added.
"If it weren't for the ridiculous Billion Dollar breakup fee, Elon would have already been long gone. Just my opinion, but Truth Social is MUCH better than Twitter and is absolutely exploding, incredible engagement!"
Musk suggests that more than 90 percent of Twitter could be fake users
At a minimum, Musk stated at the All In summit tech conference, 20 percent of Twitter users are bots. He then rhetorically asked if it was possible that 80 or even 90 percent of the platform might be bots.
Nobody really knows for sure how much of Twitter is fake, but one thing is for certain: Much, if not most, of it is computers interacting with computers, and not humans engaging with other humans.
While Musk has in the past voted for Democrats, he says he might now vote Republican because the Democrat party is "overly controlled" by unions, which tend to pay much higher wages to workers.
If it is identified, even as a ballpark figure, just how much of Twitter is fake, then Musk might make a new offer to buy the company at a lower price. All of this will be dependent upon just how many "spam" accounts exist on Twitter.
Musk's statements came after Reuters published a fake news piece claiming that less than 5 percent of Twitter is AI bots. Musk does not agree and has put his deal "temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam / fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users."
Musk added that he is "still committed to acquisition," however the chips may fall.
To test things out himself, Musk tweeted that he and his team are going to take a "random sample of 100 followers of Twitter" to try to determine how many accounts are fake.
"Whoever thought owning the libs would be cheap never tried to acquire a social media company!" Musk tweeted separately about the fiasco.
In response to someone on Twitter who told him that at least 25 percent of Twitter is fake, "guarantee[d]," Musk responded that there is a chance it is "over 90% of daily active users, which is the metric that matters to advertisers."
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