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Twitter to give Musk data on fake accounts amid threats to scrap deal

Date: June 10, 2022 Omkar Patwardhan Omkar Patwardhan
Twitter to give Musk data on fake accounts amid threats to scrap deal 
Twitter, the social media platform that has been in the news over the past couple of weeks for its supposed $44 billion acquisition deal with Tesla boss Elon Musk, is reportedly preparing to hand Musk data on fake accounts after he threatened to pull out of the deal if the company refused.



As per sources, the social media platform will provide the world's richest businessman exposure to a stream of data containing over 500 million tweets generated every day.



It is to be noted that several organizations already pay Twitter for access to the information, which also includes a real-time ledger of tweets, data concerning the devices from which people tweet, as well as data regarding the accounts that tweet.



According to the New York Times, Twitter will allow Musk to see its highway of daily traffic, in light of the legal threats that the deal would be scrapped otherwise.



For the uninitiated, Musk threatened Twitter on Monday by claiming that he might abandon his $44 billion offer to buy the firm if it fails to effectively provide him access to data on fake and spam accounts. The multibillionaire has questioned Twitter's claim that fake and spam profiles account for less than 5% of the company's 229 million users.



Earlier on Monday, Musk’s team of Lawyers sent a letter to Twitter's chief legal officer, claiming that Musk believes that the firm was actively obstructing and sabotaging his rights to obtain information and data from the firm as part of the takeover deal.



They claimed that refusing to present the data was a material violation of the agreement, essentially allowing Musk to abandon the deal without having to pay the $1 billion break fee mentioned in the contract.



After reports emerged, Twitter shares jumped up 0.8% to $40.45 per share in afternoon trade, compared to the original acquisition price of $54.20 per share, signaling market skepticism that the merger will go through even if data sharing could make it much more difficult for Musk to back out.



Fake or spam accounts, which are not operated by humans, may deliver advertisements or scams to Twitter users with the reply option or direct messaging, or they might represent actions to sway public opinion by tweets with political propaganda.



Musk has questioned if advertisers, who make up a large portion of Twitter's revenue, are getting good value for their money as a result of the bot problem, despite Twitter's quarterly profit reports continuously quoting a 5% figure since 2014.



Source credit: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/08/twitter-elon-musk-data-demand-fake-accounts

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Omkar Patwardhan

Omkar Patwardhan started his professional career in the hospitality industry. Having nurtured a deep-sated passion for words however, he found his way into content writing and now pens down articles for numerous websites, including News Origins, spanning the sectors of business, finance, and technology.