ELON Musk today said he is putting a temporary halt on his much-anticipated deal to buy Twitter, sending shares in the social media giant plunging.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” he tweeted.

Musk, the richest man in the world and founder of automaker Tesla, has made the eradication of bots and spam accounts one of the centrepieces of his proposed US$44 billion (RM193 billion) takeover of Twitter.

When the deal was announced late last month, he said he wanted to make Twitter “better than ever” by “defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans”.

But since then, his potential stewardship of the social media platform has hit several bumps.

On Wednesday, Musk said he will be open to lifting a ban on former president Donald Trump imposed after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 last year.

Activist groups called on advertisers to boycott the platform if Musk opened the gates to abusive and misinformative posts.

The announcement today saw shares drop by 20% in early electronic trading before Wall Street opened. – AFP, May 13, 2022.