Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” pending confirmation that spam and fraudulent accounts account for fewer than 5% of all users, he tweeted. A reliable source’s link was attached to the tweet, which stated that Twitter projected in a regulatory filing that those sorts of accounts comprised 5% of its monetizable daily active users in the first quarter of 2022.
According to the tweet, Musk appears to be concerned about that data. However, it is unclear what procedures he and Twitter will take to validate them.
Since Musk is purchasing Twitter for $44 billion, he plans to quadruple the user base and has stated that he would fight spam bots, authenticate all users, and open source its algorithms. Simultaneously, he stated that he will support free speech while opposing content restriction. As part of it, he stated that he will lift the Twitter ban on Donald Trump and other users.
However, some social media content moderation specialists argue that both goals are conflicting. Former Facebook security head Alex Stamos, for example, recently tweeted that Musk’s Twitter principles may contradict European laws, citing “a large mismatch between the US and the UK’s Online Safety Bill and EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Acts.” Stamos also pointed out that Twitter is saturated in the developed world, so any expansion “will require even more dealing with the challenges of autocracies and developing democracies.”
Musk later tweeted that he is “committed to [the] acquisition.” Twitter shares are down 10% in pre-market trading as of this update.
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