Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said Friday his $44-billion deal to purchase Twitter is suspended temporarily.."Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk told his more than 92 million Twitter followers..In April, Twitter announced it had "entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $44 billion. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company.".Shares of the social media company have fallen 20% in pre-market trading while Musk waits for details confirming whether spam bot accounts on the social media site make up less than 5% of users..A spam bot is a computer application that spammers use to send vast quantities of automated spam messages onto computer platforms. It’s usually a simple program and relies on data gathered via email harvesting or scraping. Once data is compiled, the spam bot uses fake accounts — in the case of Twitter fake user accounts..Twitter estimated that fake accounts were fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter — the total number of fake accounts, therefore, is estimated to be almost 15 million..Musk's sale freeze is in place so he can get an accurate count of spam bots and in so doing will have a more accurate count of the number of humans who use Twitter — due diligence and some necessary transparency..Ridding the platform of fake accounts is a high on Musk’s to-do list. He announced in April he wanted to clean out the spam bots, authenticate all human users, and make its algorithms open source..Musk is also determined to reinstate the platform’s reputation for free speech, abolishing its aggressive censorship policies and content moderation..Musk’s latest tweet went out a short while after Twitter announced it was freezing hiring as part of a pre-deal cost-saving drive..Kayvon Beykpour, head of consumer product, and Bruce Falck, in charge of revenue product, were both told they no longer have a job by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. The two executives tweeted the development in separate public posts..Hindenburg Research LLC, an investment research firm that watches activist short-selling activity said on Monday there is a “significant risk" Musk will lower his original offer..They cited the ongoing meltdown in technology shares, Twitter’s own weak first-quarter results, and the prospect that Musk will sell his 9% stake if the deal falls through..Musk still has to secure all funding for the buy-out. He has been in talks with investors to raise enough capital to eliminate any need for any loans using his assets as collateral, according to insiders.
