Elon Musk ‘turns the car’ to postpone buying Twitter

Elon Musk announced that the deal to buy Twitter will be on hold until he gets an exact number on the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Immediately after the announcement, Twitter shares plummeted 18% to $37.1 per share, the lowest level since Musk revealed his stake in the company in early April.

“Agreement with Twitter has been temporarily suspended to account for spam/fake accounts that account for less than 5% of users on the platform,” Musk wrote on Twitter.

In a report published in early May, Twitter estimated that fake or spam accounts accounted for less than 5% of monetized daily active users (mDAUs) in the first quarter, on average.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and an advocate of free speech, has stated one of his priorities is to remove “spam bots” from the platform.

Earlier, on April 25, Twitter announced that it would sell itself to Elon Musk. Under the deal, Musk will buy back Twitter for $54.2 per share, or $44 billion. Musk will have to pay a $1 billion breakup fee if he stops his deal to buy Twitter.

On May 10, billionaire Elon Musk announced that he would lift Twitter’s ban on former US President Donald Trump once the acquisition is completed. “The permanent ban should only be for bot accounts, or scam or spam accounts. I don’t think it’s right to ban Donald Trump, I’m going to reverse this ban forever,” Musk said at the FT Live’s Future of the Car conference.

Twitter does not currently respond to comment. Representatives for Elon Musk or Tesla also did not respond to requests.

Huong Dung (Synthetic)