Elon Musk has backed out of the Twitter deal, citing a lack of information about bots on Twitter. The reason he gave strikes me as pure horseshit. Everyone knows that Twitter is choked with 'bots. Numerous articles have pointed out that a majority of Trump's "followers" on Twitter are 'bots and/or paid trolls from troll farms.
This is pure conjecture on my part, but I suspect that Musk finally figured out the Hobson's choice he would have been left with had the deal gone through.
When the deal started, Musk indicated anger about why Trump was kicked off of Twitter, and he called it "censorship," so let's review that.
End-User License Agreement and Moderation Policies
When you sign up for an account on Twitter, there's a page full of legalese that most people ignore. Trump had violated the terms of that EULA for years before he was finally kicked off of Twitter. Had Trump been a liberal, he would have been booted from Twitter for violating the EULA years sooner, but because he is a conservative, he was able to get away with breaking the rules for years before finally facing consequences.
Of course, if you listen to the right-wing safe-space media, Trump did nothing wrong and was kicked off of Twitter because he is a conservative. This view comes from the fact that rightists are completely divorced from reality. That's why they get all of their information from the right-wing safe-space media bubble in the first place: so that they can avoid engaging with reality.
Twitter was far too lenient with Trump for far too long because he is a conservative. Had he been a liberal, he would have been banned much sooner. Essentially, the conservatives were whining and crying about the fact that conservatives have to follow the rules at all, and to them, that is completely unfair. In their view, it is only fair if liberals have to follow the rules and conservatives don't. If conservatives have to follow the same rules as everyone else, then the system is unfair to conservatives.
The Trap Musk Almost Fell Into
So here is the dilemma that Musk would have been stuck with had he bought Twitter:
Horn 1 of the Dilemma
On horn 1, Elon does what he threatened to do and what conservatives wanted him to do. He implements a moderation system that is "fair" in the way that conservatives understand fairness. Suddenly, Twitter would continue applying the rules to liberals, but stop applying the rules to conservatives.
In one fell swoop, this turns Twitter into something like the Free Republic message board, or any of the many failed attempts at conservative social media platforms in the past. Anyone who isn't far-right would abandon the platform for another social media site. The conservatives who remain on Twitter would quickly grow bored because without non-fascists to troll, they are stuck with talking to each other, and no one likes that, not even them.
Twitter collapses like so many other failed social media platforms, and he loses tens of billions of dollars that he invested in Twitter.
Horn 2 of the Dilemma
On horn 2, Elon applies moderation equally to conservatives and liberals. Since to conservatives, this is the most unfair thing possible, and exactly the opposite of what they were hoping would happen, this causes the entire conservative movement to turn on him. He becomes more hated than Hilary Clinton and has to deal with a sudden flood of anonymous death threats combined with the fact that his location in the world can be easily tracked and published.
He would suddenly have to pay a lot more for personal security. At this point, leftists, liberals, and conservatives would all hate him, and his brand would be severely tarnished, perhaps enough to undermine the profits he gets from Tesla.
No matter which way he went, he was screwed and likely to lose very large sums of money. I suspect this is the real reason he backed out of the Twitter buyout. Somehow, someone managed to break through his right-wing brainwashing and explained to him exactly how much doo-doo he would have been in had the deal gone through.