Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, has placed his intention to buy Twitter on hold, raising new doubts about whether he will proceed with the $44 billion acquisition.
Musk tweeted early Friday that he wanted to know how many spam and false accounts there were on the social media network.
He has been open about his desire to address Twitter’s problem with “spam bots” that impersonate actual people, and he appeared to wonder whether Twitter was underreporting them.
However, the business has warned in regulatory filings that their bot forecasts may be low for at least two years, leading some analysts to conclude that Musk is highlighting the issue as an excuse to withdraw from the deal.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted Friday morning, indicating he’s skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.
On Friday, Musk subsequently tweeted that he’s “still committed to acquisition.” Neither Twitter nor Musk responded Friday to requests for comment. Musk has conducted a long flirtation with Twitter that culminated in an April deal to acquire the social platform.
Twitter acknowledged questions about its bot account count in its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, admitting that the number could be low.
“In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated,” the statement said. A check of Twitter’s SEC filings reveals that the company’s estimate of spam bot accounts, as well as comparable wording indicating concern about it, has been in Twitter’s quarterly and annual reports for at least two years, long before Musk made his offer.
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