Elon Musk stroked speculation that he could seek to renegotiate his takeover offer for Twitter, saying a viable deal at a lower price would not be “out of the question”.
The development lead Twitter’s shares to fall 8.2% on Monday’s closing. Earlier, the stock has been dropping on speculation that the deal would close for $44 billion.
Musk at a Miami technology conference said estimating that fake users make up at least 20 per cent of all Twitter accounts. That was the low end of his estimate on the number of bots on the network, and he asked rhetorically if it could be as high as 90 per cent, according to a live-streamed video of his remarks posted by a Twitter user.
“Currently, what I am being told is that there is just no way to know the number of bots,” Mr Musk said at the conference. “It is, like, as unknowable as the human soul.”
Earlier Musk said his bid to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” pending details about how many spam and fake accounts were on the platform.
