Elon Musk and Twitter’s $44 billion feud has gotten even uglier as both sides continue to target each other in litigation battles. Musk is still adamant about the fact that Twitter misrepresented its userbase to distort spam and bot account data and that that fact is enough for him to walk away from the deal.
According to Musk, he was ‘hoodwinked’ into the deal by Twitter as the company misled both investors and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. His arguments for abandoning the deal were presented in a Delaware court last Friday.
He also added that the number of monetisable daily active users on Twitter is 65 million less than the company’s 238 million claims. The company reportedly also misrepresented how many of these users view ads coming in at only around 16 million. Advertising is the company’s primary revenue source, which is why these numbers carry such significance.
Musk is making attacking Twitter’s process for estimating the number of fake and spam accounts based on his own calculations, something the company deems unreliable.
Additionally, the banks financing the massive $44 billion deal have a financial incentive to help Musk walk away, but would have to face extensive legal hurdles in doing so, reports Reuters.
Twitter hit back with a 127-page reply saying that Musk created a story to get out of the deal after the stock market and his personal wealth both declined in value. The company also claims that Musk’s response to the lawsuit includes mischaracterisations of the merger agreement, specifically around the company’s metrics.
Twitter is backing on the fact that Musk is using “alleged inaccuracies” in the data it provided because there isn’t any basis for his claims. Additionally, the micro-blogging site claims that Musk has invented representations that it never made about said metrics and is selectively using the “extensive confidential data” that the company provided him to breach the contract.
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