Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his deal to buy Twitter can�t move forward unless the company shows public proof that less than 5% of the accounts on the social media platform are fake or spam.

Musk made the comment in a reply to another user on Twitter early Tuesday. He spent much of the previous day in a back-and-forth with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who posted a series of tweets explaining his company�s effort to fight bots and how it has consistently estimated that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are fake.

In his tweet Tuesday, Musk said that �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.�

He added: �Yesterday, Twitter�s CEO publicly refused to show proof of 5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.�

Twitter declined to comment.

It�s Musk�s latest salvo over inauthentic accounts, a problem he has said he wants to rid Twitter of.

At a Miami technology conference Monday, Musk estimated that at least 20% of Twitter�s 229 million accounts are spam bots, a percentage he said was at the low end of his assessment, according to a Bloomberg News report.

The battle over spam accounts kicked off last week when Musk tweeted that the Twitter deal was on on hold pending confirmation of the company�s estimates that they make up less than 5% of total users.

Also at the All In Summit, Musk gave the strongest hint yet that he would like to pay less for Twitter than the $44 billion offer he made last month.

He said a viable deal at a lower price would not be out of the question, according to the report by Bloomberg, which said it viewed a livestream video of the conference posted by a Twitter user.

Musk�s comments are likely to bolster theories from analysts that the billionaire either wants out of the deal or to buy the company at a cheaper price. His tweet Tuesday came in reply to one from a Tesla news site speculating that Musk �may be looking for a better Twitter deal as $44 billion seems too high.�

�Twitter shares will be under pressure this morning again as the chances of a deal ultimately getting done is not looking good now,� Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who covers both Twitter and Tesla, said in a research note. He estimated that there�s �60%+ chance� that Musk ends up walking away from the deal and paying the $1 billion breakup fee.

Musk made the offer to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share on April 14. Twitter shares have slid since then and are now down by just over 8%, to close at $37.39 on Monday.

To finance the acquisition, Musk pledged some of his Tesla shares, which have slumped by about a third since the deal was announced.

(AP)