Elon Musk shared a tweet on Friday morning saying that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is on hold temporarily, linking to a Reuters article stating that by Twitter's estimates, fake accounts on the platform "comprise less than 5% of users." This per an SEC filing.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk wrote.
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
Musk "seeks more details," Axios reports, noting as well as that Twitter shares fell more than 17 percent in pre-market trading, while Telsa stock, the EV company Musk founded and operates, rose nearly 5 percent.
This is only one day after Twitter's current CEO, Parag Agrawal, parted ways with two top executives at the social media company, and well after the Board and Musk came to a deal on the price of the buyout, $44 billion. Musk has already secured capital and additional investors for the takeover.
He did tweet after the initial announcement of the hold that he is "Still committed to acquisition."
Still committed to acquisition
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
Musk launched the Twitter takeover bid after conservative satirical site The Babylon Bee was suspended by the platform for saying that Dr. Rachel Levine, the Biden administration's transgender diversity hire who serves as assistant health secretary in the Department of Health and Human services, is a man.
Musk also said recently that "Twitter obvs has a strong left wing bias."
After having voiced concerns about the platform, on the platform, Musk began to explore buying the company outright with the stated goal of bringing free speech back to Twitter. He has even stated that he would overturn the most notorious ban on the platform, that of President Donald Trump, removed while he was president in the hours following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Twitter had been angling to remove Trump for some time prior to that, but had stated that it was in the public's best interest to keep him on the platform so that what he was saying could be publicly known, as he was the leader of the United States.
Musk has also said that he would find ways to remove bots and spam accounts from the platform, so that the site would be made up entirely of human users.
Per Reuters, Twitter estimated in a filing on Monday that spam accounts only made a small share of its "monetizable daily active users during the first quarter." This out of the some 229 million users "who were served advertising in the first quarter."
In that filing, Twitter said the company faces "several risks" until the deal closes, as the company faces the difficult and dicey time during an acquisition process where deals can go south as all the company's cards are laid on the table.
One of those concerns is if Twitter will be able to retain advertising dollars, and the additional "potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy."
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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