Elon Musk on Friday tweeted that he had put his $44bn deal to take Twitter private “temporarily on hold” pending details supporting the calculation that spam and fake accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of users.

Musk posted his remarks on the microblogging site with a report from the Reuters news agency about the number of Spam accounts.

It was unclear what the legal effect of his notice was.

Twitter shares were down 19 per cent in pre-market trading in New York.

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

Musk this week told the Financial Times that he would reinstate the Twitter account of former US president Donald Trump, saying that he thought the ban placed on him was “morally wrong”.

The story to which Musk linked was based on figures released on May 2 showing the number of fake accounts. Musk has said a reduction in the number of such accounts would be a key goal of his ownership of the platform.

There was no new filing on the website of the US Securities and Exchange Commission explaining Musk’s comment on Friday morning.