Elon Musk said on Saturday that his planned $44 billion (42.9 billion) takeover of Twitter should move forward if the company can confirm some details about how it measures whether user accounts are "spam bots" or real people.
The billionaire and Tesla CEO has been trying to back out of his April agreement to buy the social media company, leading Twitter to begin proceedings last month to take him to court to complete the acquisition.
Musk countersued, accusing Twitter of misleading his team about the true size of its user base and other problems he said amounted to fraud and breach of contract.
"If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms," Musk tweeted early on Saturday.
"However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not".
In response to a Twitter user asking whether the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was probing "dubious claims" by the company, Musk tweeted: "Good question, why aren't they?"
Musk also challenged Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a "public debate" about the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
"Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5 per cent fake or spam daily users!" Musk tweeted.
The billionaire then polled his Twitter followers on whether they thought less than 5 per cent of Twitter daily users were "fake/spam".
The poll, which garnered more than 822,000 votes, ended with 64.9...
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