Elon Musk puts Twitter buy on hold, casting doubt on US$44 billion deal
- The billionaire tweeted that he wants details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, later adding that he’s ‘still committed to acquisition’
- Some analysts to believe that Musk could be raising the spam bot issue as a pretext to back out of the deal
Elon Musk said on Friday that his plan to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold”, raising fresh doubts about whether he will proceed with the US$44 billion acquisition.
Musk tweeted that he wanted to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform. Musk has been vocal about his desire to clean up Twitter’s problem with “spam bots” that mimic real people and appeared to question whether the company was under-reporting them.
But Twitter has disclosed in regulatory filings that its bot estimates might be low for at least two years, leading some analysts to believe that Musk could be raising the issue as a reason to back out of the deal.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted on Friday morning, indicating he is sceptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.
Musk later tweeted that he was “still committed to acquisition”. Neither Twitter nor Musk responded on Friday to requests for comment.