Elon Musk said Friday that his planned US$44 billion purchase of Twitter is "temporarily on hold" pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, another twist amid signs of internal turmoil over the proposed acquisition.
In a tweet, the Tesla billionaire linked to a Reuters story from May 2 citing a financial filing from Twitter that estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5 per cent of the company's "monetisable daily active users" in the first quarter.
"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users," Musk said, indicating he's skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.