Former Disney CEO Bob Iger in 2015. Image: Thomas Hawk (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Bob Iger said Disney looked ‘very carefully’ at all Twitter users and found that a portion were not real, which ‘heavily’ discounted the value of the deal.
Former Disney CEO Bob Iger claims the company abandoned plans to buy Twitter in 2016 after discovering that a “substantial portion” of its users were fake.
Speaking at Vox’s Code conference, Iger said the negotiations were “just about done” when he decided to take a closer look at aspects of the deal.
He added that the company looked “very carefully” at all Twitter users and estimated that a “substantial portion – not a majority – were not real”.
“I don’t remember the number but we discounted the value heavily,” Iger said at the Vox event.
While the number of bots was a factor, Iger added that the presence of hate speech on Twitter and its “potential to do as much harm as good” also impacted the deal.
“This was just something that we were not ready to take on and I was not ready to take on as the CEO of a company and I thought it would have been irresponsible.”
Fuel for the fire
The former CEO’s statements come amid a legal battle between Twitter and Elon Musk, who had planned to acquire the company for $44bn.
But Musk revealed his plans to back out of the deal in July, after claiming he didn’t receive enough information about fake accounts on the platform.
Twitter claims that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5pc of users on the site, and has said that Musk is refusing to keep his end of the deal because it “no longer serves his personal interests”. The company is now suing the Tesla boss.
Interesting …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2022
A Delaware court has denied Musk’s attempt to push back the date of the trial, which is currently set for 17 October.
However, he has been allowed to incorporate claims made by Twitter whistleblower Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, a former senior security staffer at the company.
Zatko recently alleged that there are “extreme” security issues at Twitter that pose a threat to its users and shareholders, and that company execs don’t have the resources to fully understand the number of bots on the platform. Experts have said that if the former security chief’s assertions are true, it could provide a “smoking gun” for Musk’s case.
Twitter said last month that the “opportunistic timing” of Zatko’s allegations “appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders”.
Texts revealed by Twitter’s lawyers suggest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have influenced Musk’s decision to back out of the deal. On 8 May, Musk sent a text to a Morgan Stanley banker suggesting it wouldn’t make sense to acquire Twitter “if we’re heading into World War III”, Intelligencer reports.
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Former Disney CEO Bob Iger in 2015. Image: Thomas Hawk via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
