The quarterly financial results for Twitter Inc have been disappointing. It reported a loss of $270 million due to “headwinds” arising from the messy buyout bid by Tesla’s top boss Elon Musk, the richest man on earth. Its revenue for the April-June quarter fell 1 per cent year over year to $1.18 billion against expectations of $1.30 billion. This is Twitter’s biggest revenue miss ever, with results coming in 11 per cent below estimates, financial markets data provider Refinitiv said.

The social media giant has blamed Musk for its poor financial performance. Earlier this month, he officially pulled out of the deal saying that the company failed to provide adequate data on the number of accounts that are spam and fake. Since then, the two have been embroiled in a messy legal battle. Twitter said that an amount of $33m to facilitate the $44 billion deal with Musk. Musk had promised to ease the content rules of the social media giant.

“Twitter has doubled-down on its position on the amount of spam and fake accounts on the platform – the reason Elon Musk had given for terminating the deal,” BBC said.

Musk criticized Twitter's moderation, calling himself a free speech absolutist, said that Twitter's algorithm for prioritizing tweets should be public, and has criticized giving too much power on the service to corporations that advertise.

"Twitter believes that Mr. Musk’s purported termination is invalid and wrongful, and the merger agreement remains in effect," it said in the earnings report.

Meanwhile, Meta and Google's parent company, Alphabet, will also announce their earnings this week.    

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