Disclaimer: This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.
Former Disney CEO Bob Iger has given a big boost to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s fight against fake accounts on Twitter.
Iger said that one of the reasons Disney decided not to buy Twitter was because they discovered that a large number of accounts on the platform were not real.
“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,” Iger said.
This is a huge boost for Musk, who has been waging war against fake accounts on Twitter. He has even offered a $10 million bounty to anyone who can help him expose the fake accounts.
With Iger’s comments, it is now clear that Musk is not crazy for believing that there are a lot of fake accounts on Twitter. It is also a damning indictment of Twitter’s ability to control the spread of misinformation on its platform.
“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. The deal that we had was pretty cheap.
“After we sold the whole concept to the Disney board and the Twitter board, and we’re 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 have to manage circumstances that weren’t even close to anything that we had faced before.
“We’re in the business of manufacturing fun at Disney — of doing nothing but good, even though there are others today that criticize Disney for the opposite, which is wrong. 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.
“We were intent on going into the streaming business. We needed a technology solution. We have all this great IP. We weren’t a technology company. How do we get that IP to consumers around the world? And we were kicking tires left and right. We thought about developing ourselves.
“Five years, $500 million. It wasn’t the money; it was the time because the world was changing fast. And at the same time, we heard that Twitter was contemplating a sale. We enter the process immediately, looking at Twitter as the solution: a global distribution platform.
“It was viewed as sort of a social network. We viewed it as something completely different. We could put news, sports, and entertainment and reach the world. And frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution-wise.”
Iger saw Twitter as a way to distribute news and entertainment content to a global audience. He believed that it could be a valuable asset for Disney. However, he was ultimately outbid by another potential buyer.
Iger has since revealed that one of the reasons he was interested in Twitter was because he believed that a substantial portion of its users was not real. This assessment may have been accurate, as Twitter has been plagued by fake accounts in recent years.
Despite Iger’s failed attempt to purchase Twitter, he remains bullish on the platform’s potential. He believes that it still has a lot of untapped potential and could one day be a valuable asset for Disney.
