Elon Musk announced his intention to buy Twitter back in April, but what followed was a war of words over bots and fake accounts that ended on Friday with him pulling out of the deal.

Namely, the world’s richest man said last week he was ending a $44 million deal to buy Twitter because the social media giant failed to provide enough information about the number of spam and fake accounts.

Twitter didn’t take long to respond, with Brett Taylor, the social media giant’s chairman, announcing legal action via, logically, Twitter.

"Twitter's board is committed to closing the transaction at the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement." We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” Mr. Taylor tweeted.

In May, Mr. Musk announced that the Twitter deal was on hold "pending details supporting the estimate that spam/fake accounts really represent less than 5 percent of users."

"To find out, my team will be taking a random sample of 100 @twitter followers," Mr Musk tweeted at the time. "I invite others to repeat the same process and see what they find."

"If we try to figure out the bot/duplicate user rate together, we can probably crowdsource a good answer."

It was this last tweet that really soured his relationship with Twitter.

Namely, returning to the social media platform shortly after his initial tweets, Mr. Musk sensationally revealed that he had been sued by Twitter for allegedly violating their NDA by revealing that the sample size for their automated user checks was 100.

“Twitter's legal department just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing that the sample size for a bot check is 100! It really happened,” Mr Musk tweeted.

Mr Musk initially bought a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter in April, but soon followed that up with an offer to buy the company in its entirety.

Experts predict a protracted legal battle could follow. The initial agreement signed by Mr Musk in April is said to have allowed him to back out of the deal for a fee of US$1 billion, but the agreement also stated that the Tesla chief executive had the right to access any data it may need to complete the transaction.

Back in May, Hindenburg Research said Twitter's equity would drop 50 percent if Mr. Musk backed out of the deal. At the time, events that influenced that forecast included a broad rout in tech stocks and Twitter's weak quarterly financial results.

Maja Garatsa Djurdjevic

Maya's career in journalism spans more than a decade in finance, business and politics. Now an experienced editor and reporter in all elements of the financial services sector, before joining Momentum Media, Maya reported for several established news outlets in South East Europe, looking at key processes in post-conflict societies.