Twitter deal on hold: Why Elon Musk has put the acquisition on hold?

On Friday, Elon Musk put his USD 44 billion deal for Twitter Inc. on hold temporarily, citing pending details in support of calculation that spam and fake accounts indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users.

In a tweets, Musk said “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than five per cent of users.” The social media company’s share fell 17.7 per cent to USD 37.10 in pre-market trading, the lowest since Musk disclosed his stake in the company.

On Tuesday, the implied probability of the deal closing at the agreed price fell below 50 per cent for the first time. The shares of Twitter dropped below USD 46.75. Earlier this month, Twitter estimated that spam accounts take less than 5 per cent of space in the monetisable daily active users who were served advertising.

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

However, after a few hours, he said that he is still committed to acquire Twitter. Elon Musk is presently the world’s richest man and a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, his one of the objective of acquiring Twitter is to promote free speech globally and removing bot accounts from the platform.

Twitter has not responded to the comment of Musk, the social media company has said that it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, which includes whether advertisers would still continue to spend on Twitter amidst the potentially uncertain future plans of the platform.

Elon Musk has been critical of Twitter’s moderation policy since a long time, and has repeatedly stated that he wants the social media platform to be a medium that supports free speech.