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• Musk’s team has stopped engaging in some funding discussions for the $44 billion deal
Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) fell as much as 5% on Friday following a report that Elon Musk’s deal to buy the social media company is in jeopardy, as the billionaire concluded the figures on spam accounts are not verifiable.
Musk’s team has determined it can’t verify Twitter’s spam account figures and they are now prepared to make “a change in direction” soon, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing three people familiar with the matter.
The takeover deal was already in the uncertain territory after Musk threatened to halt the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter unless the company showed proof that spam and bot accounts were fewer than 5% of users.
However, the WaPo report said Musk’s team has stopped engaging in some funding discussions for the $44 billion deal, citing a source.
Twitter held a virtual briefing with reporters earlier on Thursday and said the social media company is removing more than 1 million spam accounts each day.
It also said human reviewers manually examine thousands of Twitter accounts randomly and use a combination of public and private data to calculate and report to shareholders the proportion of spam and bot accounts on the service, which signaled to come up with the figure that less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users each quarter are spam accounts.
A Twitter spokesperson Brian Poliakoff declined to comment to the news outlet and referred to a statement the company made in June saying that it “has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement. We believe this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders. We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.”
Picture Credit: Bloomberg
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