“Agreement on Twitter temporarily suspended pending details to support the calculation that spam / fake accounts actually represent less than 5% of users, “tweeted Musk.
The Twitter deal is temporarily suspended pending details to support the calculation that the spam / fake accounts actually represent … https://t.co/Cx5mfKtKVi
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 1652435078000
Shares of Twitter plunged 20% in pre-market trading after Musk’s tweet on Friday that the deal had been terminated over details on a recent Twitter filing.
The microblogging site said in its latest quarterly results “that the average of fake or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented less than 5% of our monthly daily active users during the quarter.”
ETtechIllustration: Rahul Awasthi
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Musk’s effort to reform Twitter included fighting fake accounts. In a statement announcing his agreement to buy Twitter last month, he said he wanted to fight spam bots, authenticate all humans, and open up the company’s algorithms.
On April 25, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter reached an agreement to buy Twitter.
Musk’s latest tweet came against the backdrop of Twitter’s hiring freeze as part of its pre-deal cost-cutting measures.
Kayvon Beykpour, head of consumer product, and Bruce Falck, head of revenue product, were both invited to leave the microblogging site by CEO Parag Agrawal.
The truth is, this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and that wasn’t my decision. Parag asked me to … https://t.co/TCmDsyNo9R
– Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) 1652372715000
Beykpour said in a tweet Thursday that he was “asked” to leave Agrawal while he was on paternity leave. He said Agrawal wanted to “take the team in a new direction”.
Bloomberg contributed to this story.