Elon Musk Backs Out of Twitter Deal

By: Abby Huang

Elon Musk is currently attempting to back out of his deal to buy Twitter. The richest man in the world had offered a $44bn bid to buy Twitter in April, but now wants to cancel the deal.

Musk has claimed that Twitter failed to provide information on fake accounts. They insisted that bot accounts only made up for less than 5% of all accounts, but Musk claimed that when he asked for evidence for the affirmation, Twitter did not comply.

"Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk's requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information," Musk’s lawyer writes in a letter.

Musk believes that spam and bot accounts could possibly account for over 20% of all Twitter accounts.

“Mr. Musk has provided numerous additional follow-up requests, all aimed at filling the gaps in the incomplete information that Twitter provided in response to his broad requests for information relating to Twitter’s reported mDAU counts and reported estimates of false and spam accounts.” the letter reads.

Musk had promised to loosen Twitter's content moderation rules once the company was under his ownership and unban individuals such as Donald Trump.

Musk halted the deal after Twitter’s refusal to give him the information on the bot accounts in May, causing their shares to drop by 7%.

Sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62102821

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922078413/tm2220599d1_ex99-p.htm