Former Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger said on Wednesday that the entertainment company did not buy Twitter in 2016 because “substantial portion” of its users were “not real,” reported Reuters.

Iger’s statement came after Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in July bailed out of his $44 billion (over Rs 3,36,910 crore) deal to buy the social media company. Musk had said that he took the decision after Twitter did not provide enough information about the number of spam and fake accounts on its platform.

Disney had decided to buy Twitter in 2016 to use the platform to distribute its content around the world, Iger said in response to a question at the Code Conference on Wednesday, Vox reported.

“We could put news, sports, entertainment, [and] reach the world,” said Iger. “And frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution-wise.”

However, just before closing the deal Disney found that a substantial amount of its users were not real.

“I don’t remember the number but we discounted the value heavily,” said Iger.

In May, Twitter estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter of 2022, reported Reuters.

The former Disney CEO also pointed out that the company was not prepared to deal with the amount of hate speech prevalent on the social media platform.

“We’re in the business of manufacturing fun at Disney of doing nothing but good,” Iger said. “...This [hate speech] 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.”

Twitter had undergone a substantial rise in targeted hate speech in the run up to the 2016 presidential elections in the United States.

Iger’s comments on Wednesday came at a time when Twitter is suing Musk for backing out of the deal to buy the company. The trail is set to begin next month.