Elon Musk backs off from the Twitter deal

Twitter plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement with Musk.

Elon Musk has backed off from the deal to buy Twitter. The law firm representing Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter stating that Twitter seems "to have made false and misleading representations" when Musk initially agreed to buy the company on April 25 and has thereby "breached" multiple provisions of the initial agreement. The announcement from Musk comes after long discussions on the number of spam and fake accounts on Twitter, and Elon Musk requested that Twitter provide details to support its internal estimate that less than 5% of Twitter's accounts are spam or fake.

Parag Agrawal, Twitter CEO, said an external review to determine the percentage of spam or fake accounts would be cumbersome to perform because of the "critical need to use both public and private information." The company eventually agreed to hand over data from over 500 million tweets that are posted every day. However, in the letter sent to Twitter, Musk's lawyer alleges that Twitter has provided them with "incomplete or unusable information,” further adding that information regarding spam and fake accounts was critical to closing the deal. Twitter responded to the letter on Friday evening, stating that it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement with Musk.