By John Ikani
A United States court has granted Elon Musk’s request for Twitter to turnover some of its user data to enable his counsel defend his reasons for backing out of the $44 billion deal to acquire the social media company.
Musk had accused Twitter of misleading him and the public on the number of spam accounts on the social networking site. The company had stated that bot accounts were less than 5% of its monetised daily active users (mDAU).
However, Musk disagreed, as he argued that the fake accounts were more than the percentage Twitter released to the capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He said the discovery was a breach of contract.
According to the billionaire, the information released by Twitter drove his reason to acquire the company, so the firm needs to provide user data to enable him determine the actual number of spam accounts on the platform. The board, however, said providing such data wasn’t part of their contract, and reiterated that the bot accounts were less than 5% as previously stated.
Although the investor has decided to terminate the acquisition agreement, he had also hinted that if the fake accounts were more than Twitter disclosed, then the acquisition fee should be reduced.
On Thursday, Judge Kathaleen McCormick partly granted Musk’s request, ordering Twitter to submit thousands of user data to the billionaire’s lawyers, instead of the trillions of user information he demanded for.
According to multiple reports on Friday, McCormick said someone in their right mind has never requested for such volume of data, but she directed that about 9,000 user data of the fourth quarter last year be handed over to Musk.
“[Musk’s] documents request would require plaintiff to produce trillions upon trillions of data points,” she said, adding that, “[Twitter] has difficulty quantifying the burden of responding to that request because no one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort.”
McCormick’s order comes ahead of a court trial between Twitter and Musk, as the company tries to prevent the billionaire from pulling out of the deal.
