In 2016, Disney Found a ‘Substantial Portion’ of Twitter Users Were ‘Not Real’

Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, has admitted he discovered a “substantial portion” of users on Twitter were “not real” back in 2016 when an acquisition was being considered by Disney.

As Reuters reports(Opens in a new window), Iger’s comments were made during the Code Conference, which is being held in Beverly Hills, California this week. It was spurred by recent news reports of the legal battle Elon Musk is about to undertake after he backed out of acquiring the microblogging and social networking service for $44 billion earlier this year.

Disney’s interest in acquiring Twitter in 2016 is covered in Iger’s memoir “The Ride of a Lifetime(Opens in a new window),” where he references the “nastiness” of the discourse on the service being a big negative point, and ultimately the deal never happened. However, this is the first time he has talked about fake user accounts.

No detail was offered as to what “substantial” means in terms of number of accounts, but it wasn’t a majority of the accounts. He also went on to say, “I remember discounting the value,” after Disney made the discovery.

This new detail is unlikely to make any difference to Elon Musk’s battle with Twitter in the courts. However, it does add more fuel to the fire that Twitter’s claim of less than 5% of accounts being bots or spam is dubious. Twitter has also been called out by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who said the service is full of security problems it’s trying to cover up.

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