Elon Musk’s lawyer tried to force Twitter to surrender their vast amounts of information
Elon Musk made an attempt to break the $44 billion agreement by claiming that Twitter had misled him about the number of fake or spam accounts. Twitter vehemently denied this and filed a lawsuit on Musk’s behalf.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk’s legal team seized on information revealed by a whistleblower on Twitter in an effort to persuade the social media platform to turn up a massive amount of data in support of their bid to block the billionaire’s takeover offer. The defense team for the Tesla CEO told a US judge that the former Twitter security chief’s allegations of serious security problems and dubious practices had improved their case, which had been having trouble in court.
During a 90-minute session on what data the corporation ought to be obliged to provide before their October trial, Peiter Zatko, a Twitter whistleblower, was often referred to by Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro. In a Delaware court, Spiro stated: “From Mr. Zatko’s perspective, management had no ambition to effectively analyze the prevalence of bot accounts.”
Early wins in the case included Twitter receiving a fast-track trial date, and its stock rose as a result of analysts’ expectations that the platform would prevail over the unpredictable billionaire. Zatko’s whistleblower complaint to US authorities, which surfaced on Tuesday, has, however, been seized upon by Musk’s counsel in an effort to further the case.
According to Spiro, the information is necessary to prove Twitter lied about spam accounts. He tried to convince the judge to order Twitter to hand over billions of “data points,” such as user geolocation and phone numbers. In response, Twitter’s lawyer, Bradley Wilson, contended that the company had not lied to anyone and that Musk needed another chance to inquire about the issues before making his unsolicited takeover attempt earlier this year.
Although Spiro told the judge that the billionaire trusted the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Twitter has observed that Musk decided not to do the normal due diligence connected with merger negotiations (SEC). The market watchdog was one of the parties named in Zatko’s complaint, which claims that Twitter disseminated fake account number statistics because “accurate measurements would weaken the company’s valuation if they ever became public.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the complaint and Musk’s attorneys’ use of it will change the course of the case. Zatko’s relevance might become apparent after his scheduled testimony before US senators on September 13. The judge has not yet reached a ruling regarding the data demands Musk’s attorneys made.
According to its lawyer Wilson, Twitter opposes disclosing particular data categories for a number of reasons, including the potential to violate users’ legally protected privacy.
