Twitter Deal Temporarily On Hold, Says Elon Musk

New Delhi: Elon Musk on Friday put his Twitter deal worth Rs $44-billion temporarily on hold citing pending details in support of the calculation that spam and fake accounts indeed represent less than 5% of users.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted on Friday.

Reportedly, shares of one of the most popular social media sites, Twitter fell 17.7 percent to $37.10, the lowest ever since Tesla's chief revealed his stake in the company in early April.

The probability of the deal closing at the agreed price fell below 50 percent for the first time on Tuesday, when Twitter shares dropped below $46.75.

Earlier this month, the social media company had estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter when it recorded 229 million users who were served to advertise.

In last month, the Tesla chief had bought a 100 percent stake in Twitter for approx &44 billion around $54.20 per share, and all of it in cash.

However, Twitter was evaluating Musk's offer for the last few weeks, but eventually, it fell into Musk's court. Earlier Musk had said that Twitter has "extraordinary potential" and he wanted to unlock it all.

Musk also had criticized some of the policies of Twitter, asserting that the content moderators on the platform are ''too involved'' and how the free speech has been hampered on the micro-blogging site.

He also announced to revive twitter by including extra features on the platform, making algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating spambots, and authenticating all humans.

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has praised Twitter employees who continue to do their work with focus 'despite the noise' amid uncertainty over his role in Twitter, once it's taken over by Tesla boss Elon Musk.

Also read: Enforcement Directorate chargesheets pvt firms, businessman in multi-crore loan fraud

Also watch: