Elon Musk said on Friday that his planned $ 44 billion Twitter purchase from the United States has been “temporarily withheld” pending details of spam and fake social media accounts, another reversal amid signs of internal unrest around the proposed acquisition.
Musk, who was vocal about his desire to clear up Twitter’s problem with “spam bots” that mimic real people, seemed to doubt whether the company was reporting them.
In a tweet, the Tesla billionaire linked a May 2 story to Reuters, citing financial documentation from Twitter that said fake or spam accounts accounted for less than 5% of “daily active users who can be monetized” in the first quarter. .
Still committed to the acquisition
– @elonmusk
“The Twitter deal has been suspended pending details supporting estimates that spam / fake accounts actually account for less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted, saying he was skeptical that the number of non-authentic accounts is so low.
Twitter did not respond immediately to requests for comment early Friday.
Musk followed his original tweet, adding: “He’s still committed to the acquisition.”
It was unclear whether the issue could ruin the deal. Shares on both Twitter and Tesla spun sharply in opposite directions, with Twitter shares down 18 percent and Tesla, which Musk had proposed to use to fund the Twitter deal, jump 5 percent.
Investors had to consider the legal issues for Musk, as well as the possibility of the acquisition of Twitter to distract from the management of the world’s most valuable carmaker.
Musk’s tweet comes a day after social media fired two of its top executives. Twitter said the company was pausing most of the hiring, except for critical roles, and “withdrawing non-labor costs to ensure we are responsible and efficient.”
In a note sent to employees and confirmed by Twitter, CEO Parag Agraval said the company had not achieved stages of growth and revenue after the company began investing “aggressively” to expand its customer base and revenue.
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