It always was a long shot. On Friday, news broke that the world’s wealthiest upright walking biped, Elon Musk, hopes to pull his $44 billion bid for the social media company, whose board of directors now says it will commence legal action against the mogul. In a letter sent by Mr. Musk to Twitter’s board, blame is laid to “material breach of multiple provisions” of the merger agreement signed in April. 

We can’t help but be disappointed by this turn of events. We were looking forward to seeing what might be done by a builder in the grand American spirit, an immigrant whose ambition soars to the planets. He has declared himself a “free speech absolutist.” He is not cowed by convention. He debunks progressive orthodoxy. He saw the banning of President Trump from Twitter as illiberal (and as bad business).

Yet the issue that is sinking the deal is allegedly the bots. Mr. Musk contests Twitter’s statements that automated and fake accounts make up fewer than five percent of its active users. He has demanded further information and contended that between 20 percent and 90 percent of Twitter’s users are non-sentient. He compares a Twitter overrun with bots to a house infested with termites, its value hollowed out from the inside.  

Mr. Musk’s lawyers are accusing the company of “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights,” providing grounds for withdrawal. Their letter accuses Twitter of making “false and misleading representations” and blocking his ability to make “an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform.” It insists such information is “necessary to consummate the transactions.”      

Not so fast, responds Twitter. The chairman, Bret Taylor, writes that the board is  “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.” The Washington Post reports that Twitter has turned over some version of its raw “firehose” of data to Mr. Musk, opening the hood to its inner workings.   

It could be that all of this is just business, a blizzard of documents that swung the wrong way, negotiation over Twitter playing out on Twitter. There was much about the sale that was unprecedented, and Mr. Musk is hardly the steadiest of hands at the wheel. For the world’s richest man, there is always another bauble. People like Mr. Musk move fast and break things, even as they also make them. Mega-acquisitions don’t always run smoothly. 

Another possibility presents itself, however. There was always rank and file hostility to Mr. Musk’s takeover. Twitter’s content decisions have often seemed selective. The most shocking is the removal, in the middle of an election, of the New York Post’s story two years ago on Hunter Biden’s laptop and suspension of that newspaper’s account, all for reporting that has been belatedly vindicated.  

Reports have leaked of an internal culture with all the intellectual diversity of a Politburo. Project Veritas captured one engineer who was recorded saying “Twitter does not believe in free speech” and that “Our jobs are at stake — he’s (Mr. Musk) a capitalist, and we weren’t really operating as capitalists, more like very socialist.” He labeled himself and his colleagues as “Commie.” He described Twitter’s home as “Commifornia.”

Promises by users to leave Twitter should Mr. Musk purchase it are blooming. In April, English comedian Jameela Jamil, with a million followers, wrote “this free speech bid is going to help this hell platform reach its final form of totally lawless hate, bigotry, and misogyny.” Apart from dollars and cents, there were always going to be those who wanted Mr. Musk nowhere near their blue checkmarks.

The sprawl of litigation that is likely to ensue from the collapse of this deal could furnish some answers as to what went wrong, or like any messy breakup, it might be impossible to reconstruct fault. If Mr. Musk’s claim holds up and Twitter is found to have sabotaged the deal, we will wonder if the prospect of a Musk-owned Twitter was just too threatening to too many people for Twitter to sign on the dotted line.