Musk made the announcement on the platform he is likely about to own. According to the tweet, he is putting the deal on hold until more details about the exact number of fake accounts of the platform surface. Also cited in the tweet is an estimate that the number of fake accounts amounts to less than five percent of its 229 million “monetisable” daily active users.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022 Among the rhetorics used as justification behind Musk’s buying of Twitter is free speech. Another is the purging of bots on the platform. Musk also previously tweeted that he intends to “defeat the spam bots or die trying” once the deal goes through. To say that he’s putting the deal on hold is more than just sending mixed messages.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022 The Guardian quotes John Colley, Associate Dean at Warwick Business School, as saying that bringing up bot numbers now may be “an excuse to withdraw gracefully”. He goes on to say that Musk may have just realised that the maths involving the cost and risk involved in making Twitter profitable just doesn’t quite add up the way he initially thought. Then there’s also the drop in Telsa shares, which is what Musk is using to partially pay for the acquisition. For those who use Twitter as just simply another platform, this is probably just another interesting development. But for those who truly take stock, no pun intended, on what Elon Musk says he wants to do with Twitter, it will be a pretty bumpy weekend. (Source: Elon Musk / Twitter, The Guardian)
