This is unethical negotiating. If you make a bid, you better look beforehand, what you're bidding on. If your bidding has an effect on someone, you better be careful with it.
It's only unethical negotiating if the Twitter board hasn't put out inflated DAU numbers. Maybe the sudden firing of Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck has raised some new suspicions about this question in Musk's mind?
> If you make a bid, you better look beforehand, what you're bidding on.
Well, looks like he did, but now questions whether what he was shown was actually truthful, no?
> If your bidding has an effect on someone, you better be careful with it.
So there are two times two possibilities: Musk genuinely has doubts about the DAU metric he hasn't had before in the force or he hasn't. Similarly there are two possibilities about the accuracy of the DAU metrics: they are within an excusable distance of the truth or they aren't. Assuming they aren't, regardless of Musk's true motives, why would Twitter deserve to be shielded from the fallout?
Musk made a serious, legally binding offer to buy with no contingencies for users (human, cyborg, bot, or otherwise). Now he wants out so he's using this bad faith argument to weasel out of the $1B escape clause.
Twitter has zero responsibility for needing to report which accounts are completely human or not human. Even if he genuinely cared about bots, Musk still screwed up by not doing due diligence before the offer.
Why is wanting a better price such an issue? "The 5% stuff" is like when information surfaces about a faulty or inaccurate odometer reading on the used car you're about to buy. If tampered with, let's negotiate a new price.