Musk’s Twitter deal ‘on hold’ until CEO proves bot accounts are less than 5 percent of users

Musk's offer to buy Twitter was "based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate," which claimed that fewer than five percent of the accounts on the site were bots.

Musk said that he believes 20 percent of accounts on the site are bots, according to Forbes, and on Tuesday, he tweeted that the 20 percent figure could me "much higher."

Musk said that CEO Parag Agrawal "publicly refused to show proof" after he tweeted that Twitter's "actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5% – based on the methodology outlined above. The error margins on our estimates give us confidence in our public statements each quarter."

"Unfortunately, we don't believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share). Externally, it's not even possible to know which accounts are counted as mDAUs on any given day," Agrawal said in a thread on Monday.

Musk has said that the deal to buy Twitter cannot move forward until it is proven that less than 5 percent of the site's accounts are bots. The deal remains "on hold."