Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal talks about spam content; Musk replies with poop emoji 

The poop emoji is not the most graceful way to conduct a public discussion between two high-profile individuals. But that's where we are. Parag Agrawal, CEO of San Francisco-based microblogging site Twitter, wrote a long Twitter thread about spam content and how it affects user experience but was greeted with a poop emoji by Elon Musk in return.  

Agrawal wrote in his thread, “First, let me state the obvious: spam harms the experience for real people on Twitter, and therefore can harm our business. As such, we are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day. Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong.” 

He added that spam is not only binary and that the most advanced spam campaigns combine coordinated humans and automation. The Twitter CEO said they compromise real accounts and use them to advance their campaign, hence, making it hard to get hold of them.  

He furthermore noted, “The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially—are actually real people. And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous—and cause the most harm to our users—can look totally legitimate on the surface.”  

Agrawal said towards the end of his thread, “There are LOTS of details that are very important underneath this high-level description. We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you.” 

To this, Musk reverted with a poop emoji and went onto write, “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.” 

Elon Musk is currently the world’s richest man with a net worth of $221.5 billion, much of it coming from Tesla stock, according to Forbes. He has been in the news for his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. While his plans for the platform are not clear, he has proclaimed himself to be a “free speech absolutist” and said there would be less moderation. 

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