Musk puts Twitter deal ‘on hold’ over spam account report

Elon Musk has said his $44bn deal for Twitter is “temporarily on hold” due to the social media platform’s revelation that fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users are false or spam accounts. 

Elon Musk, after he queried the number of fake/spam accounts on the social media platform, said he was waiting for information "supporting [the] 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

Following the announcement, Twitter shares fell 25% in pre-market trading. 

Musk, the world's richest man and the chief executive of Tesla Inc, has been vocal on cleaning up fake accounts. He had earlier said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform. 

Twitter reported nearly two weeks ago that fake accounts accounted for less than 5% of its daily active users during the first three months of this year.

The billionaire is now examining that figure.  

Under the terms of the deal, if either Twitter or Musk walk away they must pay the other side a termination fee of $1bn.