Elon Musk.
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- Twitter is suing Elon Musk for trying to terminate his proposed acquisition of the company.
- Musk said one reason he wants out is Twitter withheld information about the number of bot accounts on its platform.
- Twitter denied this and said Musk didn’t read a summary it gave him of how it calculates bot numbers.
Twitter sued Elon Musk Tuesday after the billionaire announced he wants to terminate his proposed acquisition of the company.
Musk’s lawyers notified the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday saying he wanted to terminate the deal, and said Twitter had not provided him with information about how it calculates the number of bots on its platform.
Twitter’s lawsuit aims to force Musk to buy the company for the agreed price of $44 billion. The issue of whether Musk’s stated concerns about bot numbers were legitimate is a key element in the legal battle between them.
Twitter said in its lawsuit Musk started making more and more demands for information around how it measures the amount of spam and fake accounts on its platform.
Twitter said it “bent over backwards” to provide Musk with the information he requested, but that in one instance he didn’t even look at it.
Twitter said that in a June 30 meeting with Twitter’s CFO Ned Segal, Musk admitted he had not looked at a summary he’d been sent the previous month detailing how the company samples the number of bots on its platform.
“Segal offered to spend time with Musk and review the detailed summary of Twitter’s sampling process as the Twitter team had done with Musk’s advisors. That meeting never occurred despite multiple attempts by Twitter,” the lawsuit said.
Elsewhere in the lawsuit Twitter accused Musk of using the number of bots on the platform as a pretext to pull out, saying he wanted out of the deal because his personal wealth had shrunk.
It also said Musk’s preoccupation with bot numbers made no sense, as previously he’d said one of the reasons he wanted to buy Twitter was to get rid of spam bots on the platform.
Musk first started talking publicly about bot numbers being a potential snag in the deal in May, when he tweeted the deal was “temporarily on hold” until the number of bot accounts on the platform could be verified.
Analysts speculated at the time the tweet could be a ploy to get a better price for Twitter or even walk away from the deal entirely.
Musk did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider.
