Hours after saying his acquisition of Twitter was ‘temporarily on hold’, Elon Musk has retracted his statement and said the deal is still on.
Hours after saying that his acquisition of Twitter had been put on hold, Elon Musk has retracted his statement and said he is still committed to buying the platform.
On Friday, Musk shocked the internet yet again by announcing that his deal with Twitter – worth a whopping $44 billion USD – had temporarily been put on hold pending clarifications on the actual number of fake accounts on the platform.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.” he tweeted.
His announcement hinged on a filing by Twitter earlier this week, in which the platform claimed that fake users made up less than five percent of the users on Twitter. The removal of fake accounts, bots, and spam accounts is one of Musk’s top priorities.
A few short hours later, however, Musk retracted his words and tweeted: “Still committed to acquisition.” It is unclear as to what led to this change.
Musk’s tweet, however, did significant damage to Twitter’s stocks. Shortly after his first tweet, Twitter stocks tumbled more than 20% percent in premarket trading. Even after his second tweet, stocks will still down 12% – well below Musk’s bid.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has been the subject of controversy from the beginning, particularly regarding policing free speech.
Twitter has spent the past couple years strengthening their content moderation policies, particularly in light of the rise of misinformation and harassment following the 2016 US presidential elections. Musk, however, has pledged to relax said policies, even promising to lift the ban on former president Donald Trump.
In any case, it won’t be easy for Musk to back out of the deal. If terminated on his end, Musk would have to fork up $1 billion USD.
Check out Elon Musk’s tweets about his Twitter deal:
Still committed to acquisition
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
