This isn’t how “material adverse event” works, which is the term that was written into the contract that Musk signed.

Normally “is the mDAU figure correct” is the kind of thing you answer before you sign the merger agreement and lock in your purchase price.

Also note that the baseline in SEC filings was 5% bots, so 6% is only 1pp higher. The claim was never that it was zero.

These are figured that Twitter has been filing with the SEC for ages. How does it make sense if the purchase was agreed upon when all this was public information?

Except that he knew that it was at least 5%. So you'd actually have to figure out how much the discount already included in the value is for that 5% (which is highly subjective, but the discount is almost certainly not also 5%), and then multiply it by six-fifths (maybe, because the discount is also almost certainly not linear).

Of course, this is all a moot point, because what an actual businessman (as opposed to a con artist) would do, if they were concerned the bot stats might be inaccurate, is make sure the agreement had specific terms in it as to what would happen if it was found to be inaccurate.

> It seems like the purchase price should be of the order of 6% less in that case.

That's not what his contract says.

Either the bots are pretty close to the 5% figure Twitter says (and 6% is definitely pretty close), and Elon has to buy at the figure he specified, or they're enough higher to have a significant impact on ad revenue, and Elon doesn't have to buy at all.