Former Disney CEO Bob Iger backed out of a deal to purchase Twitter in 2016 because the company determined that a "substantial portion" of users were fake.
"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," Iger said Thursday during an appearance at the Code Conference in Beverly Hills, California.
"I don't remember the number, but we discounted the value heavily," he added. "But that was built into our economics. Actually, the deal that we had was pretty cheap.
"Then you have to look, of course, at all the hate speech and potential to do as much harm as good. 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."
Iger's comments come amid a legal battle between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and Twitter over Musk's deal to buy the social media company for $44 billion. Musk, who is trying to walk away from the deal, has claimed that Twitter has misrepresented the prevalence of spam or bot accounts on the platform.
Twitter has sued Musk to hold him to the deal, and the trial is to begin on Oct. 17.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.