Elon Musk calls on SEC to investigate Twitter's spam, fake account estimate

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has suggested that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission should investigate whether Twitter's internal estimate that spam and fake accounts make up less than 5% of users on the social media platform is accurate.

The call to action comes after Musk issued a poll to his more than 97 million Twitter followers asking whether they believe that more than 95% of Twitter users are real.

Representatives for the SEC and Twitter declined to comment.

In April, Twitter accepted Musk's $44 billion offer to acquire and take it private at $54.20 per share. However, the deal is temporarily on hold pending details supporting Twitter's calculations on spam and fake accounts.

Musk estimated during the All In tech conference in Miami on Monday that fake and spam accounts make up at least 20% of Twitter's users. He later tweeted that the figure "could be *much* higher."

"My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate," he added. "Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does."