Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has announced that his purported $44-billion takeover of Twitter has been temporarily put on hold.

He said that the decision was made to evaluate the issue of fake user accounts on the social media platform and the prevalence of spam.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” he tweeted, linking to a Reuters article from May 2nd exploring the issue.

According to the article, Twitter made a filing claiming that that false or spam accounts represented under 5% of its 229 million users.

Musk’s Twitter takeover came in the wake of him making claims that the company does not do enough to protect free speech. Among the plans he has touted for Twitter include removing spam bots and updating the company’s content moderation policies in line with his free speech beliefs.

The news Musk put his takeover of Twitter on hold has knocked the company’s share price down by 20% in premarket trading.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

The announcement comes hot on the heels of news that two Twitter executives will leave in the company. Twitter Head of Product Kayvon Beykpour and Revenue Product Lead Bruce Falck have both confirmed that they have been asked to leave the company by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.

With Beykpour currently on paternity leave, his temporary replacement, Jay Sullivan, will become permanent head of Twitter’s consumer division, and will oversee its revenue team during the search for a new permanent leader.

In addition, Twitter has said it will suspend hiring, save for roles critical to its business.

“We are pulling back on non-labour costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient,” a company statement reads.

However, Beykpour tweeted to say that his departure was not his decision. Falck’s Twitter now lists him as being unemployed.

The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision. Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.

— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) May 12, 2022

An employee memo sent by CEO Agrawal warned that the company had not hit its growth and revenue milestones. This came in the wake of an investment push by Twitter to expand its user base and revenue.

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With Twitter set to be taken over by Musk, the company is in the spotlight for any movements that might reveal what it will look like under the his control.

He has suggested that former US President Donald Trump, who was permanently banned from Twitter after the company considered his statements as having incited the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, could be reinstated.

The decision to suspend the deal comes after Musk has reportedly secured around $7bn of financing for the deal from outside investors to reduce the reliance on his own fortune, largely based on shares in automaker Tesla. Investors are said to include Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

However, there are concerns that the Musk takeover could ultimately drive advertisers away from Twitter. Loosening moderation standards could see advertisers forced on content with misinformation and hate speech connected with their adverts.

With ads providing £1.12 billion of revenue for the company in the first quarter of 2022, this could jeopardise a substantial chunk of the company’s revenues.

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