Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, announced on Friday that he would withdraw his contentious $44 billion offer to acquire the San Francisco-based company because Twitter had not given it enough information about the number of fake accounts. Twitter then pledged to sue Musk to uphold the agreement and said it would do so on Saturday.

The acquisition's likely unraveling was just the most recent development in a drama between the richest man on earth and one of the most significant social media platforms, and it may signal the start of a protracted court struggle.

Under these conditions, Musk might have agreed to pay Twitter a $1 billion breakup fee. Instead, it appears prepared to go to great lengths to complete the acquisition, which the company's board has approved and which CEO Parag Agrawal has adamantly stated he wants to complete.

Musk's attorney Mike Ringler complained in a letter to Twitter's board that his client had been looking for information about the frequency of "fake or spam" accounts on the social media site for almost two months.

"Twitter has either omitted to do so or declined to do so. Twitter has occasionally ignored Mr. Musk's demands, rejected them for apparent illogical reasons, and pretended to cooperate while providing Mr. Musk with insufficient or useless information "stated the letter.

Musk added that the data is essential to Twitter's operations and financial health and is required to complete the deal.

Bret Taylor, the board chair of Twitter, stated in response that the board is "committed to completing the merger on the terms and price set forth with Musk, and "plans to seek legal action to enforce the merger agreement." In the Delaware Court of Chancery, we are sure we will win."

Business conflicts between the numerous corporations, like Twitter, that are incorporated in Delaware are typically handled by the trial court there.

On his own social media platform, Truth Social, former president Donald Trump commented: "THE TWITTER DEAL IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE 'TRUTH'." Musk declared in May that he would reinstate Trump on Twitter after the melee at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which resulted in a ban.

Much of the turmoil around the deal was expressed on Twitter, where Musk, who has more than 100 million followers, bemoaned Twitter's underperformance as a free speech site.

Twitter's stock dropped 5% on Friday to $36.81, much less than the $54.20 Musk agreed to pay. Tesla's stock, meanwhile, increased by 2.5 percent to $752.29 per share. Twitter's stock kept falling after the market closed and Musk's letter was made public, while Tesla's stock increased.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives warned investors in a note to investors that "this is a nightmare scenario for Twitter and its board." He anticipated a protracted legal battle by Twitter to either obtain the $1 billion breakup fee or get the arrangement restored.

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In a conference with journalists and business executives on Thursday, Twitter attempted to provide more clarity on how it determines the number of spam accounts. According to Twitter, 1 million spam accounts are deleted daily. The accounts make up significantly less than 5% of its active user base each quarter.

Twitter claimed it reviews "thousands of accounts" picked at random, utilizing both public and private data to assess whether an account is legitimate, including IP addresses, phone numbers, locations, and account behavior when active, to compute how many accounts are malicious spam.

According to several stories at the time, Twitter reportedly gave Musk access to its "fire hose" of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily messages last month, though neither the business nor Musk verified it.

One of the main justifications Musk provided for his interest in taking Twitter private was his conviction that he could add value to the company by eliminating its spam bots, the same issue he is now citing as justification for terminating the agreement.

Christopher Bouzy, the creator of the research company Bot Sentinel, which monitors phony Twitter accounts used for harassment or disinformation, said, "This whole process has been strange." "He was aware of this issue. It's strange that he would try to wriggle out of the agreement by using trolls, bots, and fake accounts."

However, according to Bouzy, the letter from Musk's legal team makes some well-founded criticisms of Twitter's lack of openness, including its apparent refusal to give Musk access to the same degree of internal information that it does for some of its more important clients.

Bouzy, who also thinks the number of bogus or spam Twitter accounts is bigger than what the business has recorded, said: "It simply appears as if they're hiding something."

Additionally, Musk's attorney claimed that Twitter violated the agreement when it let go of two top managers and reduced the size of its talent acquisition team by one-third.

He claimed that the terms of the sale deal obliged Twitter to "seek and gain consent" before departing from its regular course of operations. The letter stated that Twitter had to "maintain substantially intact the material components of its current corporate organization."

Musk appears to start considering purchasing Twitter in late March. At that point, according to Twitter, he allegedly got in touch with the firm's board members, including co-founder Jack Dorsey, and informed them that he was buying up shares and was considering either joining the board, taking Twitter private, or founding a rival company.

Then, on April 4, he disclosed in a regulatory filing that he had acquired a 9 percent stake in the company, valued at roughly $3 billion, making him the largest stakeholder.

Twitter initially offered Musk a position on its board. Six days later, though, Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not, in fact, be joining the board. After that, his acquisition bid for the business rapidly came together.

Musk added a marijuana allusion to his pricing when he agreed to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per share. To help pay for the purchase, he sold shares in Tesla valued approximately $8.5 billion. He then increased his commitments from investors by more than $7 billion, including influential figures from Silicon Valley like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

Inside Twitter, confusion and a decline in morale followed Musk's public criticism of one of the company's senior attorneys who was engaged in content-moderation decisions.

groups that opposed the takeover from the beginning, including as those that support women, minorities, and LGBTQ individuals, applauded the announcement on Friday.

"Contrary to what Musk may say, this agreement is not coming to an end because of spam accounts or Twitter bots. Because of Elon Musk's own unpredictable actions, support for extremists, and poor economic judgment, this transaction is crumbling "Angelo Carusone, the head of Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit watchdog organization that has criticized Musk's bid for Twitter, made this statement.

Musk "made it plain that he would scale back Twitter's community standards and safety requirements, turning the platform into a fever swamp of dangerous conspiracy theories, partisan chicanery, and white nationalist radicalization," the author claimed.