Elon Musk Says Twitter Deal Holds Until Company Clarifies Number of Fake Accounts

By Jason Abbruzzese -

Elon Musk said early Tuesday that his deal to buy Twitter will not move forward until the company proves that fewer than 5% of its accounts are fake.

Musk, responding to a tweet from a Tesla-focused media company, said that some analysis had found that Twitter had up to 20% fake accounts, which would be four times what Twitter publicly claims in its files.

"My offer was based on Twitter's filings with the SEC being accurate," he tweeted.

"Yesterday, the CEO of Twitter publicly refused to show proof of <5%," Musk tweeted.

"This deal cannot move forward until he does," he added.

Twitter seems to be making progress.

The company on Tuesday filed the necessary paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission to call a shareholder vote on the deal with Musk.

“Twitter is committed to completing the transaction at the agreed price and terms as soon as possible,” the company wrote in a press release about the filing.

[Elon Musk says he will let Trump back on Twitter if he manages to buy the social network]

Musk and the social network's CEO, Parag Agrawal, exchanged a few tweets on Monday after Agrawal wrote a thread explaining the difficulties in finding and curbing fake accounts.

In a series of 13 tweets, Agrawal exposed how Twitter uses a combination of human review and automated detection to try to tackle fake accounts.

Musk has called on Twitter leaders to be more transparent in calculating the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Agrawal said in his tweet thread that the company has to keep some of its methodology for counting fake accounts private.

Musk responded with a poop emoji.

Musk's tweets add to a growing body of evidence that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO may be looking to backtrack or renegotiate his Twitter purchase deal, which is valued at some $44 billion.

Musk said last week that the deal was "temporarily on hold" over the fake account issue, though he reiterated then that he remained committed to buying the company.

It was unclear then if any action had been taken to stop the deal.

[Elon Musk refuses to be part of the board of directors of Twitter after becoming the main shareholder]

Since it was hinted that Musk might be rethinking the deal, Twitter's share prices have fallen amid a broader market downturn.

Twitter's market capitalization -- its value as a company based on its share price -- was about $28.6 billion as of early Tuesday.