Elon Musk Puts Twitter Deal on Hold, Seeking Details on Spam Bots

Billionaire Elon Musk dropped an update on his ongoing Twitter acquisition talks, stating that the deal is “temporarily on hold.”

In a tweet on Friday, Musk shared a Reuters article on the number of Twitter spambots and wrote that the details of supporting calculation that spam or fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 percent of users are pending.

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, who is currently heading Tesla and SpaceX, made a $44 billion acquisition offer to Twitter, which was at a 38 percent premium to the then trading price of Twitter stocks. He believes that the company can innovate and grow at a faster pace if taken private.

Additionally, he said that one of his priorities as the Twitter owner is to remove spambots.

Spam Bots: A Grave Problem for Twitter

Twitter is very popular among politicians, celebrities, activities and all types of personals with some public recognition. But, the micro-blogging platform has a grave problem of spambots or fake accounts, which were used to run fake campaigns and trend some topics.

In the Q1 earnings report, Twitter mentioned that it had 229 million daily active users in the first three months of the year. It added 12 million new users in that quarter.

Though the exact number of fake or spam accounts on the platform is not known, Twitter recently revealed that it was less than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.

Now, Musk seems to verify this estimated number provided by the social media platform.

Despite Musk being the richest man in the world and his lucrative offer for Twitter, many have anticipated the collapse of the deal. Twitter also pointed out several risks before the closure of the deal, including a drop in advertising revenue and “potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy.”