Elon Musk says he is terminating $44bn Twitter deal

Musk’s lawyers say Twitter failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts.

Elon Musk has said he is terminating a $44bn deal to buy Twitter, saying the social media company did not provide information about fake or spam accounts on the platform.

In a filing to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on those accounts, which is fundamental to the company’s business performance.

“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information,” the filing read.

“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.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies.

The company’s board chairman, Bret Taylor, tweeted on Friday evening that, “the Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement”.

The terms of the deal require Musk to pay a $1bn break-up fee if he does not complete the transaction.

The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

— Bret Taylor (@btaylor) July 8, 2022

The board unanimously agreed to sell the platform to Musk for $44bn in April, in a deal that stirred controversy and questions about free speech and misinformation on the popular social media platform.

The agreement’s possible unravelling is just the latest twist in a saga between the world’s richest man 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 was failing 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 that time that it intended to close the deal at the agreed price and terms. “Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Musk to consummate 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 media network estimates that fewer 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 being used for spam campaigns.

“The hard challenge is that many accounts which look fake superficially – are actually real people,” he wrote. “And some of the spam accounts which are actually the most dangerous – and cause the most harm to our users – can look totally legitimate on the surface.”