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Rabat – Elon Musk has announced he is terminating the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, citing the company’s failure to provide information on fake and spam accounts on its platform.
Musk’s lawyers claimed Twitter refused to respond to multiple requests for that information in a filing to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), adding that the information is necessary to the business performance of the company.
“Twitter, by its own admission, provided only incomplete data that was not sufficient to perform such an independent assessment,” the filing reads.
While Twitter did not officially comment on the deal seemingly falling off, the company’s chairman, Bret Taylor, reiterated Twitter’s commitment to the deal.
“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” he tweeted late on Friday.
Musk will be obligated to pay a $1 billion break-up fee if he does not go through with the deal.
Musk, who has more than 95 million followers on the platform, had decried what he saw as a lack of free speech on the platform and offered to buy it for $44 billion. Twitter’s board unanimously agreed to the deal.
The agreement sparked controversy on the platform, with many progressives saying it would allow hate speech and misinformation to spread free on the platform, due to Musk’s support for “limitless” free speech.
“Mr. Musk: free speech is wonderful, hate speech is unacceptable. Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech have NO PLACE on Twitter,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said following the announcement of the deal.
