Elon Musk announced in a tweet that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is on hold, due to a report about spam accounts on the social network being fewer than previously thought.
According to a story from Reuters on May 2, bot accounts, which automatically post tweets based on certain content, represent less than 5% of the accounts that have been used to monetize the service through ads and its other paid offerings, such as Twitter Blue, Super Follows and more.
With this number, it may be lower than what Musk expected, as he's been tweeting in recent weeks about his aims to get rid of bot accounts, while looking at ways to monetize the service further.
But this may be a ploy from Musk to lower his original deal, as he may be getting buyers-remorse in how much he agreed to pay for the social media platform.
Could the deal fall apart?
Elon announced on May 13 that a report has found that spam accounts make up for 5% of the total userbase on Twitter.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuynMay 13, 2022
Due to this revelation, the deal has been put on hold, but it's interesting that only now Musk has decided to do this.
However, in a further tweet he said that he's 'still committed to the acquisition'. With this in mind, there may be nothing to worry about for now, just further scrutiny on just how many more accounts are discovered to be spam.
