Elon Musk said he is ending a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, saying the social media company did not provide information about fake or spammy accounts on the platform. In a filing with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information about those accounts, which is fundamental to the company’s business performance. “At times Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, at times denied them for reasons that appear unjustified, and at times has claimed compliance while providing Mr. Musk with incomplete or useless information,” the filing states. “Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of this Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading statements relied upon by Mr. Musk in entering into the Merger Agreement,” it also said. Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press and Reuters. The company’s chairman, Bret Taylor, tweeted Friday night that “Twitter’s board is committed to closing the transaction at the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement”. The terms of the deal require Musk, Tesla’s CEO, to pay a $1 billion breakup fee if he does not complete the transaction. Twitter’s board is committed to closing the transaction based on the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident that we will prevail in the Delaware Court of First Instance. — Bret Taylor (@btaylor) July 8, 2022 The board unanimously agreed to sell the platform to Musk for $44 billion in April, in a deal that has sparked controversy and questions about free speech and misinformation on the popular social media platform. The potential collapse of the deal is just the latest twist in a saga between one of the world’s richest men and one of the most influential social media sites. Much of the drama has played out on Twitter, with Musk, who has more than 95 million followers, lamenting that the company has failed to live up to its potential as a platform for free speech. Last month, Twitter allowed Musk access to its firehose, a repository of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets. The company said at the time that it intended to close the deal at the agreed price and terms. “Twitter has and will continue to share working information with Musk to complete the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement,” it said in a statement. In May, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said the social network estimates that less than 5 percent of all its users are fake. But in a series of tweets, he highlighted the challenge of weeding out real people from bots and accounts used for spam campaigns. “The difficult challenge is that many accounts that appear on the surface to be fake – are actually real people,” he wrote. “And some of the spam accounts that are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look perfectly legitimate on the surface.” Daniel Ives, an analyst at investment firm Wedbush, said Musk’s filing on Friday was bad news for Twitter. “This is a disaster scenario for Twitter and its board, as the company will now fight Musk in a protracted legal battle to recover the deal and/or the breakup fee of at least $1 billion,” he wrote in a note to the customers.
