Bid to buy Twitter ‘temporarily on hold’ – Elon Musk

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday announced that his bid to buy Twitter is “temporarily on hold.”

Musk, who was Twitter’s biggest shareholder when he mounted his bid to buy the platform, tweeted that the deal is stalled “pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users” on the site. Musk has since been overtaken as Twitter’s biggest shareholder by the Vanguard Group.

Last month, Twitter’s board of directors accepted Musk’s proposal to purchase the company for roughly $44 billion.

Musk’s potential takeover of Twitter has rattled the company in recent weeks. Twitter’s top lawyer cried during a meeting with her teams last month as she expressed concerns about how the company could change under Musk’s leadership, POLITICO reported.

Human rights groups have also warned about Musk’s buying of Twitter, asserting that policy changes by the self-described “free-speech absolutist” could result in an increase in hate speech and other harmful rhetoric on the social media platform.

Meanwhile, Republican politicians and conservative commentators — who frequently claim that Twitter places “shadow bans” on their content by reducing the visibility of their accounts — have embraced Musk’s takeover attempt.

On Tuesday, Musk said he would end Twitter’s permanent ban of former President Donald Trump, who was booted from the platform last year after inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.