(LifeSiteNews) – Billionaire tech guru Elon Musk has postponed his multi-billion dollar deal to buy Twitter, apparently owing to the estimated number of spam accounts held on the platform.
Today the Tesla CEO announced to his 92 million Twitter followers that the $44 billion deal is “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
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
Twitter stock tumbled following Musk’s announcement, with shares in the company dropping by almost 25 percent in pre-market trading. Tesla shares, however, experienced a 7 percent leap in value.
Musk linked to a Reuters article reporting that false Twitter profiles accounted for fewer than 5 percent of the social media giant’s “monetizable daily active users” from January to March.
Twitter noted, however, that the “actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated. We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts.”
Part of Musk’s buyout plan has been to remove “the spam bots” on the platform, leading technology newspaper TechCrunch to suggest that Musk would be overpaying for the platform if spam accounts make up significantly more than 5 percent, given the extent that the user base would shrink by if Musk implements measures to “authenticate” real human users.
Musk, a free speech proponent who was expected to become the temporary CEO of Twitter after his buyout of the mega-corporation, has also stated his intention to reinstate banned accounts, such as that of former President Donald Trump.
Musk is the world’s wealthiest person according to Forbes, having a fortune estimated at almost $279 billion.