Elon Musk’s latest stunt: calling on the SEC to investigate Twitter’s user numbers

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Does Musk want to buy the company? The company's prospective new owner insisted that the $44 billion deal he agreed to cannot move forward until he sees the proof.

Musk pulled in another recurring character from his 24 / 7 revolving circus by asking the US Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate him.

Image: Twitter

The SEC has accused Musk of violating his rights to free speech, although that is not the only thing he does.

SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 2, 2020

His quarrel with them has focused on their attempts to enforce the consent decree he agreed to in the summer of 2018? You could add to that the investigations into Musk and his brother over possible insider trading and his failure to make a timely disclosure about how much he had acquired before making a bid for the company.

Joke or not, the social network has had problems with accurate metrics and recently admitted it had been over counting users for years. The CEO of the company stands by the estimates about the amount of bot activity included in its daily active user metric, but that puts Parag Agrawal in a standoff with Musk, who might be using the situation to lower his price for the company or exit the deal altogether.