Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout uncertain, nearly 1 million spam accounts ‘removed daily’

The most closely watched business deal in the world of technology in the recent months is back in public glare along with a concern that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been persistently sharing – bot accounts on Twitter.

About 4% in the shares of Twitter followed the latest report on Thursday that has cast fresh doubts about the prospects of the $44 billion buyout.

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According to a new report published by the Washington Post underlined that the deal seems to have been plunged into danger after the Tesla CEO team said that Twitter could not verify its figures on the spam accounts.

The discussions on the deal have “stopped”, people familiar with the matter were cited as saying in the report, putting the acquisition by the Tesla chief “in serious jeopardy”.

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“Twitter 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,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying by Bloomberg after the Post report created ripples in the market.

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The statements by Elon Musk – the world’s richest person – have in the past led to a drop in the Twitter share prices ever since the deal was announced earlier this year.

Despite being given access to internal data, Musk’s team too has not been able to give an exact figure of bots on the microblogging site, used by billions across the planet.

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Meanwhile, Twitter has said it removes 1 million spam accounts daily amid speculation over uncertainty over the deal.

Musk had threatened to pull back the offer if it was not proven that less than 5% of the total users of Twitter were spam accounts.

In estimates to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for years, Twitter has been referring to the figures on bots, albeit, with a disclaimer that the numbers may be higher than what was estimated.