Elon Musk says Twitter deal ‘temporarily on hold’ over report about fake accounts

There’s another twist in the Twitter deal.

Elon Musk said early Friday morning that his plan to buy the social media company was “temporarily on hold” over a report of fake accounts on the platform.

It was not immediately clear based off Musk’s tweet if any official steps had been taken to halt the acquisition, which was agreed on in late April with a price tag of about $44 billion. Twitter’s value, calculated based on its stock price, has dropped in recent weeks along with a broader decline in tech stocks.

Twitter was worth about $35 billion as off Friday morning. Right after Musk’s tweet, the price of Twitter’s stock plunged more than 18 percent.

Musk did not immediately respond to questions via Twitter about any steps taken to halt the deal.

Musk’s tweet included a link to a Reuters article from May 2 on Twitter’s public filings, in which the company said fake or spam accounts only accounted for about 5 percent of its overall user base. Musk has made cracking down on fake accounts a major part of his reasoning for buying the company.

Twitter currently counts about 229 million users.

Though the deal has not gone through yet — major company acquisitions can often takes months or even years to finalize — Twitter has already shown signs of major changes. On Thursday, Twitter pushed out two executives and instituted a hiring freeze

The Friday announcement from Musk adds another chapter to what has already been a winding and strange acquisition process that started in early April, when it was revealed that he had acquired a major stake in Twitter.

But since then, both the circumstances around Twitter and the broader tech industry have changed. After initially agreeing to join Twitter’s board, Musk reversed course and instead launched a takeover, eventually agreeing to a deal with the company’s board.

Musk has since been taking on investors, but his personal circumstances have also changed. Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index still counts Musk as the world’s richest person, but his net worth has declined by almost 20 percent (about $56 billion) in 2022, due in large part to a steep decline in the stock price of Tesla, where he is CEO. Some of the money Musk has taken out as a loan for the deal is backed by Tesla stock.