Elon Musk has said his deal to buy Twitter is ‘temporarily on hold’ until he gets more information on the number of fake and spam accounts on the platform.
Recall that the billionaire Tesla owner agreed a £34.5 billion ($44 billion) deal to take over the social media giant, pledging to improve free speech on the site and remove fake accounts.
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However in a new tweet, Musk said the deal was now on holding ‘pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users’.
His tweet linked to a report published earlier this month which said Twitter estimates spam and fake accounts comprise less than 5% of its daily users.
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Musk has not offered any further details on his thinking.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
Following the news, shares of the social media company fell 20% in premarket trading.
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The world’s richest man and the chief executive of Tesla Inc had said that if his acquisition went through one of his priorities would be to remove “spam bots” from the platform.
The company had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter.
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It also said it faced several risks until the deal with the SpaceX founder is closed, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter.
Twitter recently adopted a “poison pill” strategy in an attempt to resist a hostile takeover, but some investors wanted the tech giant to seriously consider Musk’s offer.
Musk has repeatedly stated how he also wants Twitter to become a platform for free speech and to reduce its reliance on advertising.
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The tech tycoon also said he would reverse the platform’s “foolish” ban on former US president, Donald Trump.
He is also pondering on adding new features including an edit button and allowing longer tweets to be posted.
