Elon Musk’s $44-billion Twitter deal temporarily on hold! Here’s why

New Delhi: Elon Musk said on Friday his $44-billion deal for Twitter Inc was temporarily on hold, citing pending details on spam and fake accounts. "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Elon Musk said in a tweet. Shares of the social media company fell 20% in premarket trading. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The microblogging platform had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

It also said it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter.

Musk, the world`s richest man and the chief executive of Tesla Inc, had said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.