FILE - Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue) Elon Musk said Friday that his planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter is "temporarily on hold" pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, another twist amid signs of internal turmoil over the proposed acquisition.In a tweet, the Tesla billionaire linked to a Reuters story from May 2 citing a financial filing from Twitter that estimated false or spam accounts made up fewer than 5% of the company’s "monetizable daily active users" in the first quarter."Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk said, indicating he’s skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.It wasn’t clear whether the issue could scuttle the deal.
Stock in both Twitter and Tesla swung sharply in opposite directions, with Twitter’s stock tumbling 18%, and Tesla, which Musk had proposed using to help fund the Twitter deal, jumped 5%.RELATED: Elon Musk would reverse Trump Twitter ban, calling it morally wrongInvestors have had to weigh legal troubles for Musk, as well as the possibility that acquiring Twitter could be a distraction from running the world’s most valuable automaker.Tesla CEO Elon Musk has entered into a definitive agreement to buy Twitter Inc.
and hopes to turn it into a privatized company.Musk’s tweet comes a day after the social media company fired two of its top managers.