Musk nam the decision after months of trying to get the takeover off the ground. In April, the Twitter board had Musks takeover bid of $44 billion approved, but financing was not yet finalized.
In a statement, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter has not responded to “multiple requests for information” about the platform’s fake and spam accounts. Twitter says these so-called bots only make up 5 percent of all accounts, but according to Musk the proportion of fake accounts is many times greater.
The number of real users is important to Twitter’s potential profitability because spam accounts don’t click or respond to ads.
According to Musk’s lawyers, Twitter has violated several provisions of the acquisition deal. “Twitter appears to have made false and misleading statements that Musk relied on when entering into the deal.”
Twitter wants to force takeover in court
The Twitter Board say to take legal action against Musk because it wants to go through with the acquisition. “The Twitter board is committed to sticking to the price and terms we’ve agreed with Musk. We plan to take legal action to enforce the acquisition,” said Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chairman of the board.
The deal also stated that Musk would have to pay $1 billion if he does not go through with the acquisition.
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Acquisition was already ‘on pause’
In May, the Tesla CEO already closed the acquisition due to his doubts about the fake accounts.on pause† He then called Twitter’s testing methods “lax and inadequate‘.
Twitter then promised Musk access to provide all internal data on tweets. But experts doubted that the data could provide any clarification.
Earning models
If the takeover had gone through, Musk had a plan to make Twitter monetize more… other income streams than ads, like it Twitter Blue-subscription. In addition, he wanted companies and governments make payment for using the service.
Last month, in a video call with Twitter employees, Musk said he wanted the number of users to quadruple to 1 billion.
Freedom of speech
Musk also wanted to give people more space on Twitter to say what they want, as long as they do not break the law. In the weeks leading up to the takeover deal, Musk criticism on Twitter because, in his view, the company would not adhere to the principles of freedom of expression. That was one of the things he did after a takeover wanted to change.
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