Elon musk puts the Twitter acquisition deal of $44bn on hold. Musk, the Tesla chief executive officer said the deal was put on hold pending details supporting the calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
—- Elon Musk said in a tweet.
In another tweet, Mr Musk said that he is "still committed to acquisition".
The company said in deciding on the number of spam accounts,
"it applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts".
"The actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated. We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts," it said.
It has been speculated by analysts that Elon musk must be seeking to renegotiate the price or even walk away from the deal.
Elon Musk has explained his priorities, which would be "defeating the spam bots" on Twitter as well as several other changes, including fetching back some banned accounts such as that of former US President Donald Trump.