Oliver Haslam on May 13, 2022, 10:09 pm

Musk Puts Twitter Deal On Hold Amidst Reports Of Fake Accounts, But Is ‘Still Committed To Acquisition’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter is turning into as big of a farce as you might have expected it to — after current CEO Parag Agrawal fired two executives yesterday, seemingly without warning, Musk today shared news the deal to buy Twitter was being put on hold.

That pause was caused by a sharing of information by Twitter itself — apparently, fewer than 5% of the accounts on the company’s social network are false or spam accounts.

We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated.

Musk, upon learning the news, took to Twitter to say he wanted clarification on that number and how Twitter came to it — without saying whether he thought it was too high or too low.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”

Regardless, soon later Musk tweeted to say that he was “still committed to the acquisition,” although it isn’t clear whether that means he has been satisfied by the information given to him by Twitter, or not.

The Musk buyout of Twitter has been a mess since it began when he bought a number of shares in the company and was offered a seat on the board. He subsequently turned that seat down — after accepting it — and launched a hostile takeover of the whole company. That takeover is currently in process.