Elon Musk said his bid to buy Twitter is on hold ‘temporarily’ (Evan Agostini/AP)
(Picture: AP)Elon Musk has stoked speculation he may walk away from his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter after tweeting he would not proceed until he had proof that fewer than 5% of accounts on Twitter were fake or spam.
The billionaire tweeted: “My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of (less than) 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”
In a statement, Twitter said it was “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.”
Musk shocked the business world last month after striking a lightning quick deal to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share.
Doubts over the deal started to emerge on Friday after Musk said his acquisition was “temporarily on hold” until he could see more detail on how Twitter arrived at its estimate for the number of fake accounts.
Twitter shares plummeted yesterday after Musk told a conference in Miami that spam accounts could represent as much as 20% of Twitter users, adding: “You can’t pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed.”
Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal hit back with a long Twitter thread setting out how the tech company deals with spam accounts and comes up with its estimates for their prevelance on the platform.
“Our estimate is based on multiple human reviews (in replicate) of thousands of accounts, that are sampled at random, consistently over time,” he said.
“We do this every quarter, and we have been doing this for many years. We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him.”
Twitter suspends over half a million accounts each day, Agrawal said, but some fall through the net because many accounts that look fake “are actually real people.”
Musk responded by commenting with a poo emoji, adding: “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.”
The comments have led to speculation that Musk is seeking a way to back out from his Twitter offer. Shares in Twitter dropped another 3% in the pre-market in New York on Tuesday and are now trading at $36.31, well below Musk’s offer price.
