The Lex Newsletter: Elon Musk’s bot rot and Nomura’s bitcoin bet

The Lex Newsletter: Elon Musk’s bot rot and Nomura’s bitcoin bet

Dear reader,

The ballad of Elon Musk goes on. It turns out signing a deal with a capricious billionaire can lead to trouble. Who knew?

Well, Lex did obviously. So did you. We all understand why Musk might be thinking twice about his $44bn bid for Twitter. Shares trade almost $20 below his $54.20 offer. But Twitter’s board must hold him to the deal.

Musk opted not to request non-public information before making his offer. Asking the company for disclosures about its calculation of bots now is not a justification for claiming that the bid is on hold. Yes, it might cost Twitter less in the long term to allow Musk to walk away or drive down his price. But letting him wriggle out of agreed terms would have negative repercussions for future dealmaking in the US. 

Lex has been banging the drum for closer investigation into social media user numbers for years. If Musk had read our 2019 investigation into Facebook’s bogus accounts, he might have started asking questions earlier. What was true then is true now: counting real users is next to impossible. Social media networks make it easy for users to sign up, which makes it easy to fake accounts. But