Musk says Twitter deal “on hold” over concern about number of spam accounts

Elon Musk today said his deal to purchase Twitter is "temporarily on hold" while he awaits details on the number of spam and fake accounts on the site, but he later added that he remains "committed" to the acquisition.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 percent of users," Musk wrote in a tweet Monday morning. In a follow-up tweet two hours later, he wrote, "Still committed to acquisition."

The first tweet saying that the deal is "on hold" included a link to a May 2 Reuters article noting that Twitter had "estimated in a filing... that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter." Twitter shares reportedly fell more than 20 percent in premarket trading after Musk's initial tweet but gained much of that back after Musk said he's still committed to the deal. Twitter shares were down about 8 percent in today's trading as of this writing.