(New York) Elon Musk claims in a stock filing Monday that Twitter is “actively resisting” his requests for information about spam and fake accounts, which he sees as a clear violation of the social network’s obligations under of its buyout offer.
Posted at 9:41 a.m.
Updated at 10:10 a.m.
“Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” read a letter to Twitter’s chief legal officer posted on Twitter. site of the American authority of the financial markets (SEC).
After filing an offer to buy the social network for $ 44 billion in April, the multi-billionaire boss of Tesla has repeatedly questioned the data transmitted by Twitter on spam and fake accounts and the measures taken to limit the proliferation.
According to Twitter, these account for less than 5% of registered accounts.
“Twitter’s latest offer to simply provide additional details relating to its testing methodologies, whether through written documents or verbal explanations, is tantamount to denying Mr. Musk’s claims for data.” he writes in the letter.
However, it is also affirmed, the entrepreneur needs more information to prepare the transition and finalize the financing of the operation.
After previous criticisms of Mr. Musk, the boss of the social network Parag Agrawal had split mid-May of a long explanation on the measures taken to fight against fake accounts.
Mr. Agrawal had notably indicated that Twitter’s figures, according to which less than 5% of the platform’s accounts are fake, were “based on multiple reproductions of human analysis of accounts, which are randomly selected”.
The whimsical entrepreneur had responded to these explanations with an emoji in the shape of poop. “How can advertisers know what they are really paying? “, he had also tweeted. “This is a fundamental question for the financial health of Twitter. »
This new episode in the saga of the takeover of Twitter comes after the expiration, Friday, of the deadline granted to the American competition authorities to launch a thorough examination of the operation. They did not seize the file, thus leaving the field free to continue the finalization of the transaction.