According to a new SEC filing, Elon Musk backed out of a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. The filing indicates that Twitter failed to provide required information about the number of bots on the social media platform.
Bots are a chronic problem on Twitter. Operators have been accused of using them to spread propaganda and false information, shill minor altcoins, and spread scams. One common scam involved offering to send back two times the amount of crypto sent to an address or more.
That last is usually a bot but not always. One person from Florida and two more in Europe were arrested on charges related to hacking the Twitter accounts of Elon Musk and several other prominent figures to spread the crypto scam.
Meanwhile, Twitter indicated that it would pursue legal proceedings to force the deal to go through and ordered employees not to tweet about the deal. Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor expressed confidence that it could convince a Delaware court to push the deal through:
Twitter claims that only 5% of its accounts are bots. However, some have speculated the percentage could be as high as 50%.
The saga began when Elon Musk…
