Twitter announced a deal to sell the company to the Tesla
founder on April 25. But Musk said on Friday that his $44 billion takeover is
"temporarily on hold" while he awaits clarity about the number of
spam accounts.
In a tweet on Saturday, Musk said his team would run its own
random sample of 100 Twitter accounts, revealing on Twitter that he chose 100
random accounts to gauge the number of spam accounts as "that is what
Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate" accounts.
Revealing Twitter's sample size appears to have landed Musk
in hot water as he said on Saturday that sharing this information meant he had
"violated" his non-disclosure agreement, Twitter's legal team had
told him.
Musk has since appeared to take aim at Twitter's algorithm,
telling users they are "being manipulated" and warning of
"potential bugs" in its code.
The billionaire later clarified: "I'm not suggesting
malice in the algorithm, but rather that it's trying to guess what you might
want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints
without you realizing this is happening".
The SpaceX founder and chief executive appeared to have
turned his attention back to the rocket company as he met with Indonesian
president Joko Widodo on Saturday at its site in Boca Chica, Texas.
Musk reportedly told Widodo that he would
"hopefully" visit Indonesia in November to discuss investment
opportunities in the country which has a wealth of natural resources including
nickel, copper and tin.