Elon Musk said his US$44 billion bid to acquire Twitter is “temporarily on hold” over issues relating to spam and fake accounts on the microblogging platform, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Musk, however, tweeted that he is “still committed to acquisition.”
Twitter, in a filing earlier this month, had estimated that false or spam accounts represented less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users in the first three months of the year. The company did mention, however, that the number could be higher than its estimates.
Removing fake users and making Twitter’s algorithms open source are some of the initiatives Musk has promised as part of his efforts to improve the platform.
The announcement comes after Musk secured nearly US$7.1 billion from investors for his bid to acquire Twitter. A regulatory filing revealed cryptocurrency exchange Binance committed US$500 million to the buyout, while Sequoia Capital will shell out US$800 million for the deal.
On April 25, Musk struck a deal to acquire Twitter even though the social networking firm had set up a “poison pill” defense to prevent the Tesla chief from raising his stake in Twitter beyond 15%.
See also: Alibaba U-turns on Jack Ma’s prophecy
Editing by Arpit Nayak
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