Elon Musk puts plan to purchase Twitter on hold

London, May 13

Elon Musk said on Friday that his plan to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” as he tries to pinpoint the exact number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, another twist amid signs of turmoil over the proposed $44-billion acquisition.

Musk has been vocal about cleaning up Twitter’s problem with “spam bots” that mimic real people and appeared to question whether the firm was underreporting them. He linked to a Reuters story about a report from Twitter that estimated spam accounts made up 5 per cent of the “monetisable daily active users” in first quarter. — AP