Twitter fires back at Elon Musk: 'His story is imagined to escape merger'

The billionaire claims microblogging platform was 'swimming naked' when it came to revealing its true number of bots

Elon Musk's dispute with Twitter over his purchase agreement rumbles on. Reuters

Twitter has hit back at billionaire Elon Musk after he pulled out of the $44 billion deal to acquire the social media company, claiming he was “hoodwinked”.

“That story is as implausible and contrary to fact as it sounds,” Twitter said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday.

“And it is just that — a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Mr Musk no longer found attractive once the stock market, and along with it, his massive personal wealth, declined in value.”

Mr Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, agreed to acquire Twitter in April, pledging to pay $54.20 a share. Upon completion of the deal, the plan was for Twitter to be converted into a private company.

However, in July, he filed paperwork to terminate the transaction, and blamed Twitter for breaching the agreement by misrepresenting the number of fake accounts on its platform.

On July 12, Twitter filed a legal challenge accusing Mr Musk of breaching the agreement.

In his counterclaims filed in a Delaware court, Mr Musk said Twitter has been concealing its true number of users, Reuters reported.

“As a long bull market was coming to a close, and the tide was going out, Twitter knew that providing the Musk Parties the information they were requesting would reveal that Twitter had been swimming naked,” the counterclaims filed by Mr Musk say.

He said that while Twitter claimed to have 238 million “monetisable” daily active users, the number of users who actually see adverts was about 65 million lower.

Mr Musk also accused the microblogging site of having played a “months-long game of hide and seek”.

Twitter said Mr Musk did not ask for any verification on the number of false or spam accounts before he entered into the merger agreement, and “forwent all due diligence — giving Twitter 24 hours to accept his take-it-or-leave-it offer before he would present it directly to Twitter's stockholders”.

Twitter bots account for up to 12 per cent of visits on the social media platform, a study by Israeli cyber-security company Cheq revealed, having analysed 5.21 million website visits originating from Twitter.

Twitter said its SEC disclosures about monetisable daily active users were accurate.

“Mr Musk does not identify any false or misleading statement of fact in this disclosure,” Twitter said in its SEC filing on Thursday.

“Instead, he asserts that his own analysis, using a publicly available website, indicates that false or spam accounts constitute at least 10 per cent of Twitter’s monetisable daily active users [mDAU].

“But that claim is untenable on its face, because Mr Musk is not measuring the same thing as Twitter or even using the same data as Twitter.

“Mr Musk can produce a higher estimate only by running a data set neither limited to nor inclusive of mDAU through a generic web tool that designated his own Twitter account a likely 'bot'. The result is a distortion that Mr Musk is hoping will, nonetheless, make waves.”

The case is scheduled to go to trial on October 17.

Elon Musk's 2022 — in pictures

Tesla chief Elon Musk and his children Damian, Kai, Saxon and Griffin meet Pope Francis in July at the Vatican. AFP

Mr Musk speaks by video in June to the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. Bloomberg

Mr Musk answers questions at the Qatar Economic Forum. Bloomberg

Mr Musk arrives at the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in May. Reuters

Mr Musk and his mother Maye Musk arrive at the Met Gala in May. AFP

The Musks pose and laugh on the Met Gala red carpet. EPA

Mr Musk waves at the Met Gala. Reuters

Mr Musk joins in online at the 'Financial Times' Future of the Car Summit in May. Financial Times

Mr Musk attends the opening ceremony of the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, in March. Reuters

Mr Musk at the Tesla factory in Berlin, Germany, in March. AP

Mr Musk speaks at SpaceX's Starbase centre in South Texas in February. AFP

The entrepreneur shakes hands with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in Porto Feliz, Brazil, in May. AP

Mr Bolsonaro and Mr Musk greet each other in Sao Paulo. Reuters

Indonesian President Joko Widodo meets Mr Musk at the SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, in May. Reuters

Mr Musk shows Mr Widodo his mobile phone during a tour of the SpaceX launch site in Texas. Reuters