Musk had agreed a $44 million takeover bid last month
Elon Musk has said his bid to takeover Twitter is “temporarily on hold” over the company’s spam user calculations.
In a tweet, Musk wrote: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
Shares of the social media company fell by 20 percent in premarket trading, following the announcement.
The Tesla chief executive had made removing ‘spam bots’ from the platform one of his priorities if his acquisition of Twitter was successful.
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
In a filing earlier this month, Twitter had said it estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5 percent of its daily active accounts during the first quarter of the year, Reuters reports.
But Musk is now keen to examine that figure for himself, hence the apparent pause on his takeover.
Last month, Musk agreed a $44 billion deal to takeover the social media platform.
He has since sold billions in Tesla shares to help finance the move, and last week secured $7 billion from new investors to pay for the takeover.
If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
Musk, who is the world’s richest person, has also said he would reverse Donald Trump’s ban from the platform, which he had described as “foolish.”
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