Elon Musk is Ending his Bid to Buy Twitter

By: Anya Li

Elon Musk is reportedly seeking to end his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter. The announcement is the latest update after he announced an interest to buy Twitter in April of this year. Musk said he backed out because Twitter failed to provide enough information on the number of spam and fake accounts, also alleging multiple breaches of the agreement.

In May, Musk said the deal was “temporarily on hold” as he was waiting for data on the number of fake and spam accounts on the social media platform. He had asked for evidence to back the company’s assertion that spam and bot accounts make up less than 5 percent of its total users. Despite this claim by the company, Musk believes that spam or bot accounts could account for 20 percent or more of Twitter users.

Spam accounts are designed to spread information to large numbers of people and manipulate the way they interact with the site and their users. Twitter has a problem with spam and bot accounts with the platform saying it removes around one million of these accounts each day.

In a letter filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk's lawyer said Twitter failed or refused to provide this information. "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," the letter reads.

Elon Musk has, for weeks, been trying to get information about how many daily active users Twitter has.

In a filing, Musk said he'd repeatedly been refused information about the number of bot accounts on Twitter, which is why he eventually wished to terminate the deal.

Twitter says it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement. "The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk," Twitter chairman Bret Taylor wrote in a tweet.

Link to article: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62102821