Back when Elon Musk‘s possible acquisition of Twitter was trending, he made a lot of claims about what he’d change. His ideas ranged from the strange to the downright ridiculous. But when the Space X CEO asked for ‘information about bots and fake accounts,’ things started to get quiet. Cut to July- the billionaire has backed out of the $44 billion deal to purchase the social media company. Twitter, in turn, is now suing Musk for pulling out.
The list of what they are suing over is quite extensive. Musk did a lot of things wrong and hurt the brand along the way. During the months prior to the dissolution of the deal, Musk publicly shared data about the company that violated his NDA with Twitter.
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he— unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” the lawsuit states.
Musk’s team argues Twitter did not share enough information about bots. But that is extremely hypocritical seeing as how he was initially interested in fixing Twitter’s crypto spam which he felt brought down the value of the platform. It’s not like he wasn’t aware of the issue when entering into a good-faith deal.
“One of the chief reasons Musk cited on March 31, 2022 for wanting to buy Twitter was to rid it of the ‘crypto spam’ he viewed as a ‘major blight on the user experience. But when the market declined and the fixed-price deal became less attractive, Musk shifted his narrative, suddenly demanding ‘verification’ that spam was not a serious problem on Twitter’s platform, and claiming a burning need to conduct ‘diligence’ he had expressly forsworn.”
The lawsuit, filed in Delaware, also claims Musk has threatened to start his own Twitter rival platform. It almost sounds like he went in and got all the details about how things worked, and then backed out because he could just do it himself. That may not be the order of things, but that’s how the general public will see things should that happen in the future.
The lawsuit also claims because Musk is no longer interested in the deal (which does not benefit him personally), he’s trying to back out of the agreement. Anyone with basic knowledge of how contracts work know that is a huge no no. But when you have the capitol like Musk does to fight something like this in court, it doesn’t really matter anymore.
It’s going to be up to the courts to decide who wins in this case. The suit will no doubt set a precedent for whatever the verdict is on this type of case. We’ll let you know what we hear about this and other news.
