Elon Musk: The Twitter deal ‘cannot move forward’ until I learn more about spam

Last Friday, Elon Musk announced, before the markets opened, that he was putting his purchase of Twitter “on hold” until he learned more about Twitter’s bot accounts. Many saw that for the feint that it was. Twitter’s stock price has dropped, which means Musk would be overpaying by billions of dollars if the deal goes through for a $44 billion purchase. Not only that, but Musk likely does not have the money anymore. Cryptocurrencies have crashed, and Musk was heavily invested in crypto. Much of his net worth is tied up in Tesla as well, and it’s likely a situation where Musk can have Tesla or Twitter but not both. In any case, Musk is a special kind of 21st century broke-ass and his attempts to purchase Twitter on layaway have been unsuccessful. So now he’s saying that the Twitter deal cannot move forward.

Elon Musk raised further doubts about the future of his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Tuesday, saying “this deal cannot move forward” until he gets more details about the volume of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

Mr. Musk, who is carrying out a public tweet-by-tweet negotiation for the influential social media platform, has latched onto the issue of fake accounts in recent days, in a move that some analysts figure is an attempt to drive down the acquisition price or walk away from the deal altogether.

Twitter has long said in regulatory filings that fewer than 5 percent of its accounts are fake — a figure that Mr. Musk says is hard to believe. In a tweet published at 3:32 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, Mr. Musk said the figure could be well above 20 percent, without providing information to support the claim.

“My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Mr. Musk said in the message. When a Twitter user replied that the volume of fake, bot and spam accounts could account for more than half of all Twitter accounts, Mr. Musk responded: “Exactly.”

The tweets on Tuesday built off similar remarks by Mr. Musk at a technology conference in Miami on Monday. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, said striking a deal for Twitter at a lower price was “not out of the question” considering the questions about spam and fake accounts.

“The more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow,” Mr. Musk said at the event. “So you know, at the end of the day, acquiring it has to be fixable with a reasonable time frame and without revenues collapsing along the way.”

[From The NY Times]

LMAO. Even the Times is calling this out for what it is – market manipulation and a brokeass way for Musk to save face when he pulls out of the deal. The thing is, this whole situation has snowballed to such a crazy degree, I doubt Musk could even walk away free and clear. The SEC is already investigating him for his lack of disclosures. He’s also in violation of his nondisclosure agreement. And when he does pull out of the deal, he’s going to get sued by a lot of people.

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