The Clap
Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that his $44 billion Twitter deal is “temporarily on hold” as he waits for the social media company to provide information on the amount of its fake accounts.
Backstory
Removing “spam bots” from the platform was one of Musk’s top priorities before making the $44 billion offer. According to Twitter’s latest quarterly report, spam bots make up less than 5% of its daily active users.
Why this matters
Twitter’s stock fell sharply following the tweet, before rebounding following another tweet by Musk saying he’s “still committed to the acquisition”.
If Musk decides to walk away from the deal, which analysts think that spam bot information would be a “lazy excuse”, he would have to pay a $1 billion break-up fee at least.