Elon Musk temporarily suspended his deal to buy Twitter after the social network reported that fake or spam accounts made up less than 5 percent of its 226 million daily active users. The CEO of Tesla, which offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion, tweeted a link to a May 2 Reuters report on Twitter, saying he wants to see the company’s calculations.
“The Twitter deal is temporarily on hold pending details supporting the estimate that spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted on Friday.
Elon Musk later tweeted that he remains committed to the acquisition as well.
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
Twitter’s stock price had plunged as much as 20% following news of the suspension, while Tesla is up 6% at the time of writing.
In its quarterly financial report , Twitter estimated that fake or spam accounts accounted for less than 5% of the platform’s active users for the first three months of the year. Twitter noted that the estimates were based on a review of sample accounts and believed the numbers were “reasonable.”
Musk has made reducing the number of “spam and scam bots” and “bot armies” on Twitter a key part of his pitch to improve service , as well as prioritizing free speech and open source algorithms. platform rating.
This would represent the last obstacle for Musk’s attempted acquisition of the social network. The company had initially announced a so-called “poison pill” measure to prevent the takeover before finally agreeing to the purchase in late April.