Threat to bin Twitter deal over bots makes Elon Musk look like a time-waster

Musk’s tactic seems designed to weary Twitter’s board to a point at which it either agrees to cut the takeover price or is happy to call the whole thing off. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters

Last month Elon Musk said he was putting his $44bn bid for Twitter “on hold”. Now the Tesla billionaire is switching from neutral to reverse gear, or at least threatening to do so. A legal letter to Twitter’s board says he reserves his right “to terminate the merger agreement”.

This development will surprise precisely nobody because Musk has been bleating about Twitter’s bots – meaning spam and fake accounts – almost from the day he signed the formal takeover terms. The point is that the quarrel is manufactured. If Musk was truly worried about how the company measures the number of bots on its site, the opportunity to demand detailed information was before he signed on the line in April.