US billionaire Elon Musk has temporarily paused the takeover of Twitter, but still wants to buy the social media company. He says so in a series of tweets. Musk referenced a post about the number of spam accounts with the service. He wants more clarity about that.
‘Twitter deal temporary on hold pending details to substantiate the calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed account for less than 5 percent of users,” Musk tweeted Friday.
Musk linked in his tweet to a message from early this month about an official document in which Twitter indicates that less than 5 percent of daily users are spam accounts. The richest person in the world now wants to know how Twitter came to that conclusion. The number of active users is important to potential profitability because spam accounts do not respond to advertisements.
In premarket trading on Wall Street, Twitter shares fell as much as 21 percent after Musk announced the temporary pause. When he subsequently determined that he still intended to continue the takeover, the share price rose slightly, but there was still a loss of more than 10 percent.
44 billion euros
The Tesla CEO wants to take over Twitter for 44 billion dollars (more than 42 billion euros), but the takeover is quite difficult. Musk initially took a stake of more than 9 percent and then said he wanted to take a passive role, but soon after accepted a role on the board. He came back to that a day later and then he launched his takeover offer. Twitter seemed to be against it at first, but then accepted the offer.
Nevertheless, there is still resistance. The US stock watchdog SEC believes that Musk reported the acquisition of his first interest too late, as a result of which he may have benefited from lower stock prices. A Florida pension fund believes that by first taking an interest, Musk can only make a takeover offer in 2025 and went to court.
At the launch of his takeover bid, Musk said he wants all automated spam accounts to be removed from the messaging service. Currently, automated accounts, or bots, are allowed on Twitter, but they must indicate that they are automated. However, spambots are already banned and Twitter is also trying to tackle those accounts.
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