Elon Musk has “temporarily” paused his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in order to assess the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
The SpaceX CEO tweeted late last week: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
He followed by writing: “To find out, my team will do a random sample of 100 followers of @twitter. I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they discover …”
If the percentage of bots to real people is found to be higher than previously reported it could reduce the value of Twitter as there would be fewer people viewing advertisements on the platform.
READ MORE: Reactions: Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter
This is the second piece of news regarding Musk’s acquisition that advertisers and marketers may find worrying. Only recently was it reported that brands and agencies may have to pay to use Twitter and advertise on the platform.
The Times also reported that 43% of Musk’s own 93 million followers were in fact bots. In the same article a Carnegie Mellon University professor estimated that between 15 to 20% of the accounts on Twitter are fake.
Though the social media platform buyout has been paused, Musk nevertheless reassured the public that he was “still committed to the acquisition”.
He also added that the bots were “angry at being counted”.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
