Musk challenges Parag Agrawal to a debate

Please let it end. 

“I hereby challenge” 

Always the one to have the last word, Elon Musk is refusing to let ‘botgate’ go. Insisting that Twitter’s untruths over the number of bots and fake accounts prevented him from taking the social platform over, he’s now challenged Twitter’s CEO to a public debate on the issue. Because he can.   

It’s a little unclear what exactly Elon wants to ‘debate’. Either less than 5% of Twitter’s active users are bots, or they aren’t… right? And with the matter poised to go to court, some people might think that a legal setting would be the best way to settle it all. But those people haven’t met Elon Musk.  

He said, she said 

The legal dispute will be heading to court in a few months. The legal teams for Team Musk and Team Twitter are already setting out their stalls, so we should lower our expectations for Elon’s latest monologues. In any case, it’s clear that this argument is going to rumble on for longer than 280 characters.  

Could Musk’s latest move be a game of chicken? While he might have already whipped up a 165-page document setting out his case, his main data source for the bot claim is a site called Botometer, which is run by a team of university researchers. Even by their own standards, their tool isn’t accurate all the time, so this could be Musk’s way of bluffing his way out of a costly court case. Or perhaps he’s hit the nail on the head after all. Wouldn’t that be something?