Amid a heated dispute between social network Twitter and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Ilon Musk that Twitter believes less than 5% of accounts on the network are fake, 2 research groups have revealed that among Ilon Musk’s followers, probably more than 23% are fake or spamming accounts, Business Insider writes.

A joint analysis by 2 research groups, SparkToro and Followerwonk, published on Sunday, concluded that more than 23.42% of Ilon Musk’s 93 million Twitter followers are likely fake or spamming accounts.

They stated that their definitions of “fake” and “spam” accounts may not match Twitter’s. They used a system of 17 alerts based on an algorithm that processed 35,000 fake Twitter accounts purchased by SparkToro and 50,000 accounts that the teams flagged as non-spammy.

According to them, if one of Musk’s followers was tagged with multiple spam signals, it was considered low-quality or fake.

Including inactive users who hadn’t tweeted in 90 days, a total of 70.23% of Musk’s followers were unlikely to be genuine or active users who see his tweets.

After analyzing nearly 100 million Musk subscribers, researchers found that 73% have spam-related keywords in their profiles, and 71% use locations that don’t match any known geographic name. Meanwhile, 41% of these accounts use display names that match spam patterns. And 69% have been inactive for more than 120 days.

The research teams also pointed out that 83% of Musk’s followers have a suspiciously low number of followers, and 78% are subscribed to an unusually low number of accounts.

The teams used other metrics that include the age of the Twitter account, the number of tweets it has made over a long period of time, and whether it uses a default Twitter profile image.

In its analysis, SparkToro noted that some of the fake accounts are not necessarily problematic, such as bots aggregating front-page news stories or posting photos and links from restaurants around the world. But most spam accounts flagged by experts are guilty of spreading propaganda and misinformation, promoting phishing or phishing attempts, spreading malware, manipulating stocks and cryptocurrencies, and harassing other users.

Recall that the scandal surrounding fake Twitter accounts erupted after Musk said last Friday that he was suspending his $44 billion purchase of Twitter until the company proved correct its claim that less than 5% of its users were fake.

The announcement sparked a heated online spat between him and Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, who vehemently defended Twitter’s valuation and wrote that it blocks half a million spam accounts a day.

One analyst firm immediately said Musk’s apparent hesitancy to buy the platform could be a ploy to negotiate a lower price or walk away from the deal altogether.

However, Twitter itself said Tuesday that the price originally agreed to with Musk would remain – $44.20 per share.