Tesla CEO Elon Musk has jokingly warned that ‘the bots are angry’ after announcing that he has temporarily put his deal to buy Twitter on hold.
At 3:41 am this morning (May 14), Musk took to Twitter to jokingly Tweet: “The bots are angry at being counted”.
It comes after research found that less than 5% of the social media site’s users were made up of spam or fake accounts.
The $44 billion (£36bn) Twitter deal has been in the works for weeks now.
But yesterday, after the business magnate shared a link from Reuters covering a new survey from Twitter, he said the deal could be on the rocks.
Musk’s tweet said: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam / fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users."
According to Bloomberg, Twitter shares dropped by around 11% almost immediately following the tweet, while Tesla shares gained by 4.9%.
To which $MSTR Founder and CEO Michael Saylor responded to Musk’s latest tweet stating: “The bots are angry at everything”.
While one Twitter user accused Musk of taking the issue in order to negotiate a lower offer price.
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However, earlier reports claim that spambots have been at the centre of Musk’s justification for buying the social platform. Before the buyout deal was finalised, Musk tweeted: "If our Twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!".
It has been speculated that since the new data from Twitter on Monday that false and spam accounts make up less than 5% of the platform's daily users, and Musk’s mission was to rid the site of spam, then he see no way to move forward with the deal.
Musk is expected to become chief executive of Twitter once his buyout deal is secure, which is predicted to take place between three to six months from now.
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