New Delhi: Billionaire Elon Musk has put his Twitter deal on hold till he gets more information about fake accounts on the platform, he said.
The microblogging site’s next owner tweeted: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
He tagged a Reuters report of 2 May that said the company estimated in a filing that “false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter”.
The report said: “The disclosure came days after the Tesla Inc Chief Executive, who has inked a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, tweeted that one of his priorities would be to remove ‘spam bots’ from the platform.”
According to Reuters, Twitter said in the filing that it “faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, such as whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter and (the) ‘potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy’”.
Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion on 26 April, which the Twitter board agreed to.
Musk had said Twitter had “tremendous potential” that he could unlock.
The billionaire also announced a series of changes – from relaxing content restrictions to eradicating fake accounts.
Also read: Twitter announces hiring freeze as firm loses two executives ahead of Elon Musk’s takeover