Main Reasons Why Elon Musk Canceled Buying Twitter

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Elon Musk ended his intention to buy Twitter for USD 44 billion (Rp 659 trillion). The Tesla and SpaceX CEO alleges there were several breaches of the deal.

The announcement is the latest in Musk's long-running drama series. Initially, the richest man in the world decided to buy Twitter in April 2022.

Musk said he had backed out of the deal because Twitter failed to provide adequate information about the amount of spam and fake accounts. In fact, Musk had met with Twitter employees to discuss the acquisition.

Feeling aggrieved, Twitter said it plans to take legal action to enforce the agreement. Musk is claimed to be subject to a $1 billion fine and a possible lawsuit for opting out.

In May 2022, Elon Musk said the deal was "temporarily on hold" because he was waiting for data on the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter.

Previously, Musk asked for evidence to support the company's claim that spam and bot accounts make up less than 5 percent of its total users. In fact, on Thursday, July 7, 2022, Twitter claimed to have deleted about 1 million spam accounts every day.

In a letter filed with the US Security and Exchange Commission, Musk's lawyer said Twitter had failed or refused to provide this information.

"Twitter sometimes ignores Musk's requests, sometimes refuses them for seemingly unjustifiable reasons, and sometimes claims to comply while providing Elon Musk with incomplete or unusable information," the letter reads.

Spam accounts are indeed considered a big problem in social media platforms. This is because spam accounts are designed to spread information to large numbers of people and manipulate the way they interact with the platform. Well, Elon Musk believes that bots on the Twitter platform account for more than 20 percent of the total Twitter users.

There are other possible reasons why Musk pulled out of the deal. Stock market prices for major tech companies have fallen sharply in recent months, suggesting Musk is bidding too much.

In addition, there is the potential impact of the merger on other companies owned by Musk. And Tesla's share price has fallen significantly since he announced his interest on Twitter.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP