By Adedapo Adesanya
In a new turn of events, Elon Musk on Friday put his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter Inc temporarily on hold.
The world’s richest man is carrying out the decision to put the Twitter acquisition on hold citing pending details in support of the calculation that spam and fake accounts indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Mr Musk tweeted on Friday.
This latest move sent the shares of the social media company falling 18 per cent to $37.10 in premarket trading, their lowest level since he disclosed his stake in the company in early April and subsequently made a best and final offer to take it private for $54.20 per share.
Twitter had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter when it recorded 229 million users who were served to advertise.
Mr Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, had said that one of his priorities would be to remove “spam bots” from the platform.
This is the latest drama ensuing from the deal after its General Manager of Consumer, Mr Keyvon Beykpour, was relieved of his job on Thursday as part of a major shake-up in the company heralding Elon Musk’s takeover.
The disappointed Beykpour took to the social medial platform to announce the termination of his appointment and said he got the shocking message while still on paternity leave.
According to him, the CEO of Twitter, Mr Parag Agrawal asked him to leave “after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.” Mr Beykpour, says he never imagined leaving Twitter in such a manner and time.
Mr Musk has other specific plans for Twitter products like verifying users who pay for Twitter Blue subscriptions, charging for embedded tweets, and other changes designed to grow Twitter revenue and users.
Business Post Contributor 
Dipo Olowookere