In more Twitter drama, this morning Elon Musk tweeted that the deal to buy Twitter is on hold as he waits for details around confirming spam or fake accounts. Twitter has already stated they looked into the numbers for Musk and found that fewer than 5% of the monetizable daily active users were represented by bots.

After the tweet, shares of the company sank nearly 20% in pre-market trading. Fighting the bits has been one of the must-haves in a Musk-owned Twitter. The path in which he would take is to authenticate all humans and make its algorithms open source. Musk has also said he’d like to make the platform open to free speech.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users

reuters.comTwitter estimates spam, fake accounts comprise less than 5% of users -filingTwitter Incestimated in a filing on Monday that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.

9:44 AM ∙ May 13, 2022

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However, to remove bots completely, Musk would have to rewrite the company’s policy which currently allows for bots. These accounts are supposed to indicate that they’re automated, however. There is one account in particular, @tinycarebot, which tweets self-help reminders.

With this now being an addition to the Twitter madness, doubts have grown in recent days that Musk would be able to pull off his acquisition of Twitter. Twitter has also begun freezing the hiring process in an attempt to cut costs. On top of that, two Twitter leaders are also leaving their positions at the company.

Twitter now hangs in the balance of fate. An investment research firm, Hindenurg Research LLC, claimed a significant risk that Musk’s proposal gets offered at a lower price. This could make sense considering the stock has lost a market cap of $9 Billion when compared to the market cap if Elon purchased at $54.20.