Musk puts Twitter deal on hold over spam, fake accounts share

Elon Musk has announced that the acquisition deal to take over Twitter has been temporarily put on hold as details are awaited to support the claims that spam and fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.

Musk had signed definitive agreements last month to take over the microblogging website for $44 billion at $54.20 per share. The outspoken billionaire has vowed to bring about sweeping changes in the company once he wholly owns its, one of them being reigning in spam accounts on the platform.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users (sic)," Musk said in a tweet on Friday.

Musk later clarified that he is "still committed to acquisition."

Twitter had claimed in a filing last week that spam or fake accounts represent less than 5% of its monetisable daily active users during the March quarter.

As per the filing, Twitter had 229 million users who were served advertising during the quarter.

Twitter had said in the filing that it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, such as whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter and "potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy."

Musk's "best and final" deal is likely to take months to close as the richest person in the world secures funds to finance the deal.

Crypto exchange Binance, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and asset managers Brookfield and Fidelity are among 18 investors which helped Elon Musk raise $7.14 billion in equity to fund his $44 billion Twitter buyout. Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, has cut the biggest cheque worth $1 billion through his Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust.

With these funding commitments, Musk has reduced the margin loan he has taken with a group of lenders by half to $6.25 billion and increased the equity financing to $27.25 billion

Meanwhile, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has expressed support Musk's Twitter takeover, terming the latter's goal of creating a platform that is "maximally trusted and broadly inclusive" is the right one.

"In principle, I don't believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness," Dorsey had tweeted.