Since the very moment of the purchase of Twitter, actually, since before, Elon Musk has not stopped making controversial and highly contested statements about the social network. However, his surprise announcement to halt the purchase has come as a surprise even to his biggest detractors.
To try to understand what is happening and why Musk is warning of this shutdown, we also have to understand the character behind the entrepreneur. Elon Musk has a very aggressive way of relating to the media. However, one should not think that this aggressiveness does not hide interests.
In this case, the interest seems quite clear: to lower the final cost of purchasing the social network Twitter.
Why Musk says he’s halting the Twitter buyout
When Elon Musk surprisingly acquired full control of Twitter at the beginning of April, he made many statements. In those statements, he showed a certain lack of interest in the financial side of the operation. On the other hand, he also stated in his declarations that what he wanted was to restore freedom of expression to Twitter.
In the midst of all this, a $44 billion deal. Although the billionaire claims that he was not worried about the financial aspect, considering that the origin of these funds will come from his other companies, he did care, and more than we thought.
Apart from the anecdote of responding with a scatological icon to one of the directors of the social network, the truth is that everything seems to point to the fact that the founder of Tesla wants to lower the value of the purchase price.
In this case, the excuse was many social network bots. This is a proven fact, but, as the CEO himself tried to make him understand on Twitter, at least half a million fake accounts are deleted every month. Musk’s response has already gone viral: a poo icon.
How far does Elon Musk want to cut the price of Twitter?
It is not clear. What seems obvious is that he does not want to take on the cost that he initially had no problem with at this stage. Knowing Musk’s negotiating track record, it may even be that all this is a studied and prepared process to tighten the negotiations.
What does not seem likely is a complete break-up of the deal. Many sources close to Musk say that this is an operation that the billionaire with is comfortable. He wants to take control of this social network and implement improvements that we have already heard about and others we do not yet know about.
It is, therefore, another phase in this chapter-by-chapter delivery of the purchase of Twitter. We will continue to follow developments.