Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition bid has suffered a setback after the entrepreneur questioned the actual number of users on the platform. The Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that his $44-billion offer would not move forward until Twitter shows proof that spam bots account for less than 5% of its total users.

“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5% (spam accounts). This deal cannot move forward until he does,” Musk said in a tweet.

20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.

My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.

Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.

This deal cannot move forward until he does.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022

The latest turn of events has sent the shares of Twitter crashing and has also ignited a sort of revolt from the company’s employees. Some executives said in leaked videos shared on Twitter that the platform was never about free speech and that has hindered its growth.

Musk’s aim in pushing for audit to determine the actual number of Twitter users will likely change the $54.20 per share acquisition cost. Musk said he suspected that spam bots account for at least 20% of users compared with Twitter’s official estimate of 5%.

“You can’t pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed,” he said on Monday at the All-In Summit 2022 conference in Miami.

Asked if the deal is viable at a different price, Musk said, “I mean, it is not out of the question. The more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow.”

“They claim that they have got this complex methodology that only they can understand… It cannot be some deep mystery that is, like, more complex than the human soul or something like that.”

Musk made a bid for Twitter acquisition on the pledge that he will promote free speech and turn the company’s fortune around. The pledge is now facing its most challenging hurdle so far.

Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal made some tweets in response to Musk’s criticisms on Monday, explaining that internal estimates of spam accounts on the social media platform for the last four quarters were “well under 5%.”

“Twitter’s estimate, which has stayed the same since 2013, could not be reproduced externally given the need to use both public and private information to determine if an account is spam,” Agrawal said.

Musk was not satisfied with the response and tweeted a poop emoji. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he wrote.

Musk’s growth plan is expected to more than double Twitter users and revenue. He expects total number of Twitter users to grow to nearly 600 million in 2025 and to 931 million in six years from now.

However, there is growing belief that Musk has paused the deal to get a lower price that will commiserate with the current volume of Twitter users or the social media company’s current value. Twitter traded at around $35, lower than the $54.20 Musk offered.

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein, told CNBC that Musk putting the deal on hold was “probably a negotiation tactic” amid a broad sell-off in tech stocks, an assessment several other analysts have come to agree with. Some said that Musk could be trying to push for a lower price while others suggest his claim about spam bot could be a pretext to abandoning the deal altogether.

“Unless Twitter grossly misreported data which would be a serious security fraud this might be a way to either negotiate a lower price or walk away,” Stefano Bonini, corporate governance expert at Stevens Institute of Technology, told the Financial Times. Two analysts also told the FT they believed Musk was trying to leverage a better price.

Two research groups, SparkToro and Followerwonk, said a joint audit they conducted shows that Elon Musk’s Twitter followers are likely 23% fake or spam accounts. Apart from Musk, other Twitter users with big followership are also said to be affected. Nearly half of US President Joe Biden’s followers is said by the audit to be fake.

If the audit is anything to go by, Musk may likely pull out of the Twitter deal or ask for a lower price. He is funding part of the deal with a $12.5 billion loan he used his Tesla stock to secure. But Tesla’s stock price has dived more than 20% since he announced his bid and Twitter said on Friday that it’s committed to completing the deal only at the agreed price and terms. In addition, a clause in the deal allows Musk to walk away only if he pays a $1 billion exit fee.

Good People, I am happy to share that our US-based neobank has performed a live transaction after we received a production-level approval from the United States regulators. We will be launching this month with support to more than 33 countries and 27,000 waitlist customers. The Visa cards (physical, virtual and wallet) are also approved to go live.

We have built this neobank for immigrants, expatriates and global citizens. With KlaDot, you can have a bank account in Nigeria with a US or UK or EU or from other 31 countries. Our APIs will make it possible for your Ghana, Nigeria, etc banks to virtualize an offshore bank account. This goes beyond multi-currency; this is real banking with the best technology stack you can imagine.

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Prepare for #ModernBanking.

In America, baby food has become a “war”-like matter. Yes, “President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that his administration would be taking new actions to attempt to alleviate ongoing infant formula shortages in the United States, including invoking the Defense Production Act. The President is invoking the act — which allows the government more control over industrial production during emergencies — to direct suppliers of formula ingredients to prioritize delivery to the manufacturers of formula.”

Typically, you do that during warfare or uncommon events like Covid-19 pandemic (making ventilators). But finding baby food now in America is like war and Mr. President has responded. With this, the government can direct what a private company should focus on. And the big one – US will be sending Defense Department planes to buy and  import formula from abroad.

America: we have akamu in Ovim, Abia State. We can offer discounts. That is baby food! Akamu to America: more forex for the Nigerian people; go for it. CBN – did you copy me? Fund the production of akamu as US needs baby food, urgently.

Biden also wrote in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on Wednesday that he was requesting they both “work expeditiously to identify any and all avenues to speed the importation of safe infant formula into the United States and onto store shelves.”

“I further request that over the next week you work with the Department of Defense to utilize contracted aircraft to accelerate the arrival of infant formula into the United States that meets our Government’s health and safety standards. This will ensure that we are using every available tool to get American families swift access to the infant formula they need,” he continued.

The Biden administration has faced growing questions and criticism for a national formula shortage that has anxious and angry parents hopping from store to store in search of baby food.

Wednesday’s announcement follows other steps the administration has taken over the last week to address concerns about a months-long formula shortage, which has worsened as a result of supply chain issues and the extended closure of a major formula plant in Michigan.