Elon Musk responds to Twitter CEO's thread on spam with poop emoji

Tesla CEO Elon Musk just shut down a thoughtful thread from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal with a poop emoji on the platform he is trying to buy.

Agrawal wrote a long tweet thread on Monday to try and counter Musk's claims the platform was chock full of fake accounts.

"We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter," Agrawal said in the 13-tweet thread. "We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc)."

Elon Musk's response:

Musk, the world's richest person on paper, followed up 14 minutes later with: "So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter."

The frosty exchange is likely to add further angst inside Twitter's San Francisco headquarters.

Musk's play for the company has been thrust into fresh doubt after the unpredictable billionaire said Friday that the Twitter deal was on "hold" as more diligence is done on whether less than 5% of Twitter's users are fake accounts (as the company's SEC filings have stated).

Amid the uncertainty, Twitter shares have now given back all their gains since Musk disclosed his stake in Twitter in early April. As of 1:32 P.M. ET, Twitter shares were at $37.85, below the $39.31 closing price hit prior to his stake being revealed.

"I can't imagine [being an employee there]; it's like living in a washing machine right now — you are in the spin cycle," Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above) earlier on Monday. "We have seen senior executives leave. Companies we cover in the tech industry have hired executives out [of Twitter]. I think you are seeing execs check out — they don't want to be in for the spin cycle. This will only make things worse."

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

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