Elon Musk says Twitter deal temporarily on hold; here's why

Tesla chief Elon Musk on Friday did a surprise announcement about Twitter's buyout deal for $44 billion being put on hold temporarily.

Taking to Twitter, the billionaire posted, "Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users," while quote tweeting a report about the same.

However, moments after, Musk replied to his own tweet saying "still committed to acquisition."

Reuters had on May 2 reported that Twitter estimated in a filing that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of its monetisable daily active users during the first quarter.

Shares of the social media company fell 20 per cent in premarket trading after the announcement, according to Reuters.

Twitter in its earlier filing had also said it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter.

The micro-blogging site has 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter, it said.

Musk, the world's richest man, has been advocating through several tweets of late that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.