Elon Musk’s lawyer accuses the platform of “frustrating their rights of information” by not providing more information about fake accounts.
Billionaire Elon Musk has threatened to withdraw from a $ 44 billion deal to buy Twitter if the social media platform fails to provide the data it asks for in bot and spam accounts.
In a letter to Twitter on Monday, Tesla and SpaceX CEO lawyers accused the company of “resisting and frustrating its information rights” under the agreement to buy the platform.
“This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the Merger Agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights arising therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement, “they wrote.
Twitter said it intends to close the deal at the agreed price and conditions.
“Twitter has shared and will continue to share information cooperatively with Musk to complete the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement,” the company said in a statement Monday.
In April, the Twitter board unanimously agreed to sell the platform to Musk for $ 44 billion, but the deal still requires shareholder approval.
In a statement announcing the deal at the time, Musk said “defeating spam bots” would be a top priority for the platform.
But last month, Musk said the acquisition was on hold because of the problem.
“Twitter is temporarily suspended waiting for details to support the calculation that spam accounts actually account for less than 5 percent of users,” Musk wrote on Twitter on May 13th. But then he added that he remains “committed” to the deal.
On Monday, experts said Musk may be looking to withdraw from the purchase deal or push to revalue the value of the platform.
“It’s pretty obvious he’s got the buyer’s remorse and he’s trying anything to get a price reduction, and I think he can be successful,” Dennis Dick, a trader who owns Bright Trading LLC, told Reuters. .
“You can see the sale on social media shares and he realized he was overpaid … all of these are tactics just to get a price reduction.”
Brian Quinn, a law professor at Boston College, also told the Associated Press that Musk “is looking for a way out of the deal or something that will get leverage for a price renegotiation.”
If Musk moves away from the deal, he could be stuck with a $ 1 billion breakout rate, AP and Reuters reported.
Last month, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said the social media network estimates that less than 5 percent of all users are fake. But in a series of tweets, he highlighted the challenge of removing real people from the robots and accounts used for spam campaigns.
“The difficult challenge is that many accounts that seem superficially fake are actually real people,” he wrote.
“And some of the spam accounts that are actually the most dangerous and cause the most damage to our users may seem totally legitimate on the surface.”
In their letter Monday, Musk’s lawyers said that if the platform relies on its public estimates, they do not understand the reluctance to allow it to “independently assess” the figures.
Aside from finances, Musk’s push to acquire Twitter, which he describes as an absolutist of free speech, has sparked a debate over free speech and the role of social media platforms in regulating of information flow.
Last month, Musk said he would allow former President Donald Trump to return to the platform.