Elon Musk will not proceed with a $44 billion takeover of Twitter Inc. unless the company proves that its spam accounts make up less than 5 per cent of its total user base.

Musk said “this deal cannot move forward” unless Twitter provides proof of claims that less than 5 per cent of its users are bots. He reiterated his claim that fake and spam accounts could make up more than 20 per cent of Twitter’s user

Last week, he tweeted that his offer to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” until he received more information about the proportion of fake accounts on the micro-blogging site. He then claimed to be committed to the deal, according to a Bloomberg report.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on Monday explained Twitter’s efforts to fight bots and how it estimated that less than 5 per cent of accounts are fake in a series of tweets. It received a pile of poop emojis as a response from Musk.

Reportedly, at the All In tech summit in Miami on Monday, he expressed that his concerns over the Twitter deal were growing.

Published on May 17, 2022