Former Disney CEO Bob Iger Says ‘Substantial Portion’ of Twitter Accounts Are Bots

Former Disney CEO Bob Iger recently explained why the entertainment giant abandoned plans to buy Twitter in 2016, noting that a “substantial number” of the platform’s users are bots and fake accounts.

Recode reports that in 2016, Bob Iger, then CEO of Disney, became convinced that the company should buy Twitter as it would be an excellent distribution platform for Disney content around the world, but shortly before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the plans to purchase the company were scrapped.

In a 2019 memoir, Iger said that the boards of both Disney and Twitter had agreed to the deal, but then he had second thoughts due to the “nastiness” across Twitter. However, the supposed “nastiness” of Twitter should have been readily apparent well before a deal was almost finalized to purchase the platform.

Now, speaking at Vox Media’s annual Code Conference in Beverly Hills, California, Iger said that Twitter would have been a “phenomenal” distribution platform for Disney but that it would have also come with too many issues — including bots.

Iger stated:

 

Then, after we sold the whole concept to the Disney board and the Twitter board, and we’re really ready to execute — the negotiation was just about done — I went home, contemplated it for a weekend, and thought, ‘I’m not looking at this as carefully as I need to look at it.’ Yes, it’s a great solution from a distribution perspective. But it would come with so many other challenges and complexities that as a manager of a great global brand, I was not prepared to take on a major distraction and having to manage circumstances that weren’t even close to anything that we had faced before.

Interestingly enough, because I read the news these days, we did look very carefully at all of the Twitter users — I guess they’re called users? — and we at that point estimated with some of Twitter’s help that a substantial portion — not a majority — were not real.

I don’t remember the number but we discounted the value heavily. But that was built into our economics. Actually, the deal that we had was pretty cheap.

This is reminiscent of claims made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk who is fighting Twitter in court to back out of a $44 billion deal to purchase the company.

As Musk moved to buy Twitter, the company made the absurd claim that only five percent of accounts on the platform are bots. Musk believes the actual number is a multiple of Twitter’s figure, while Iger puts the figure at “a substantial portion — not a majority,” meaning closer to 50 percent of the platform’s accounts.

Read more at Recode here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan