Musk says Twitter deal on hold pending bot count
STORY: Elon Musk said Friday (May 13) that his $44-billion deal for Twitter was temporarily on hold.
In a tweet, the world's richest man suggested he was waiting for more details on just how many accounts on the social media platform might be bots rather than humans.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," he said, linking to a Reuters article from May 2.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shares in the company fell quickly in premarket trading.
Earlier this week the value of Twitter shares had already fallen well below what Musk offered in April.
The company had recently estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter of 2022.
Musk, who is also the chief executive of Tesla, had said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.
Twitter has also said it faces several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter.
