Elon Musk says Twitter Deal can't Proceed Without Clarity on Fake Accounts

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Elon Musk says Twitter Deal can't Proceed Without Clarity on Fake Accounts
19 May 2022
min read

News Synopsis

Elon Musk said the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc. wouldn't go any further until it became clear that the number of accounts in the company was fake, raising new questions about plans to acquire the social media company. 

Mr. Musk's recent comment has been added to the question of whether he is determined to complete a deal struck in the tech stock plunge. Last week he said he had put his transaction on hold over his concerns about fake accounts on the platform.

Elon Musk has said in a tweet that the Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has refused to show any proof that less than 5% of Twitter’s accounts were fake. Musk also said that the deal cannot move forward until the CEO does provide proof of the claim. 

Twitter bans more than 500,000 spam accounts every day, and every week it bans millions of accounts that are suspected of being fake when humans can't verify them, he said. Tesla CEO Musk said last week that he would try to verify Twitter's numbers and that others should do the same. Agrawal suggested that external estimates of spam accounts would not be accurate.

Twitter's share price fell 1.6% to $36.78 in pre-market trading on Tuesday. That took shares further below $54.20 per share when Mr. Musk agreed to acquire the company. According to some analyses, Twitter may have more fake accounts than it discloses, even though they use a different methodology than Twitter and include accounts that the company excludes from its estimates. 

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