Twitter sale: Elon Musk puts £34.5 billion deal 'on hold' over fake and spam accounts

The billionaire Tesla owner agreed a £34.5 billion deal to take over the social media giant last night, pledging to improve free speech on the site and remove fake accounts.

But in a new tweet, Mr Musk said the deal was now on holding “pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users”.

His tweet linked to a report published earlier this month which said Twitter estimates spam and fake accounts comprise less than 5% of its daily users.

Mr Musk – who is reportedly worth £219bn – has not offered any further details on his thinking.