Twitter deal: $44-billion deal temporarily on hold, Elon Musk tweets

Twitter deal: Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that his $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc was temporarily on hold. The reason he cited is pending details on spam and fake accounts. Musk shared this information through his official Twitter account.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk said in a tweet.

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

The social media company's shares dropped 20% in premarket trade. A request for comment from Twitter was not immediately returned, said Reuters.

Earlier this month, the company had estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter, Reuters reported.

It also stated that until the deal with Musk is finalised, it faces various risks, including whether advertisers will continue to spend money on Twitter.

Musk, the world's richest man and CEO of Tesla Inc, has stated that removing "spam bots" from the platform would be one of his top goals, Reuters said.