Elon Musk has said that he was putting a temporary hold on his much-awaited deal to buy Twitter, sending shares in the social media giant down.
While making the announcement, Musk tweeted: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
Musk who is the world’s richest man and founder of Tesla had made the removal of spam accounts and bots one of the major plans of his proposed $44 billion takeover of Twitter.
When the deal was announced recently, he revealed he wanted to make Twitter “better than ever” by “defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans”.
But Musk’s potential stewardship of Twitter has hit several bumps since then.
Not too long ago, Musk disclosed he was open to lifting a ban on former President Donald Trump imposed after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
After making the disclosure, activist groups called on advertisers to leave Twitter if Musk permits abusive and misinformative posts.
His latest announcement has dipped the shares of Twitter by 20 percent in early electronic trading before Wall Street opened.
