Elon Musk on Friday temporarily halted his $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc, citing details pending in support of calculations that spam and fake accounts actually represent less than 5% of users. Shares of the social media company fell 17.7% to $37.10 in premarket trading, after Musk disclosed his stake in the company in early April and later made the “best and final” offer to take it private for $54.20 per share .
The implied probability of the deal closing at the agreed-upon price fell below 50% for the first time on Tuesday, when Twitter shares fell below $46.75.
Twitter estimated earlier this month that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter, when it reported 229 million users who were advertised .
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“The Twitter deal temporarily pending details supports the calculation that spam/fake accounts actually represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted on Friday.
Musk, the world’s richest man and a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, had said one of his priorities would be to remove “spam bots” from the platform.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for Musk or his company Tesla Inc were not immediately available for comment.
The social media company said it faced several risks until the deal with Musk closed, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter amid “potential uncertainty about future plans and strategy”. .
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Musk has been critical of Twitter’s moderation policy. He has said he wants Twitter’s algorithm to prioritize tweets to be public and was against advertising corporations having too much power over the service.
Earlier this week, he said he would reverse Twitter’s ban on former US President Donald Trump when he bought the social media platform, indicating his intention to cut moderation of the site.
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