Tesla CEO Elon Musk has put his Twitter buyout "temporarily on hold" as claims that less that 5% of users on the platform are false or spam accounts are checked.
Musk said in a tweet (below) that the "Twitter deal [is] temporarily on hold pending details supporting [the] calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users".
Musk has said that addressing the number of spam and bot accounts on Twitter would be one of his key priorities, but he now appears to be making sure there aren't too many of these non-monetizable accounts before the deal goes through.
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 tweet is the first public hesitation Musk has shown over his purchase of Twitter and references data from May 2, released a week after his offer of $44 billion was accepted, which claimed fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily users were fake accounts.
However, in a subsequent tweet, Musk made clear that he is "still committed to acquisition."
Musk didn't say the deal would be cancelled if more than 5% of accounts do turn out to be fake but putting the deal on hold at all is in fairly significant contrast to his (and Twitter's) previous attitude towards the buyout.
The social media giant's founder Jack Dorsey called Musk "the singular solution I trust" in a series of tweets celebrating the sale.
Thumbnail image credit: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
