Elon Musk’s £34.5bn takeover of Twitter ‘temporarily’ put on hold
ELON MUSK has said his deal to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold” over details around the number of spam and fake accounts present on the site.
The billionaire Tesla owner agreed a £34.5bn deal to take over the social media giant last month, pledging to improve free speech on the site and remove fake accounts.
But in a tweet on Friday, Mr Musk said the deal is now on hold “pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users”.
His tweet linked to a report published earlier this month which said Twitter estimates spam and fake accounts comprise less than 5 per cent of its daily users.
It is unclear why Mr Musk has said this detail would compromise the deal, and the Tesla boss has not tweeted any further on the issue.
When his proposed takeover was announced in April, Mr Musk said one of his key aims was to “defeat the spam bots”, in reference to the fake and automated accounts operating on the platform.
Mr Musk had also pledged to bolster free speech on the site and earlier this week reiterated his belief that former US president Donald Trump should have his permanent Twitter ban reversed.
Mr Trump was permanently banned from Twitter in January 2021 after the social media platform said the then-president had violated its glorification of violence policy after he repeatedly tweeted his support for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol building on January 6 in protest at Mr Trump’s election defeat to Joe Biden.
His account had already been temporarily suspended earlier that week for breaching the same rules in relation to more tweets praising those who stormed the Capitol.