Elon Musk gets a call from Twitter legal team over NDA violation
This comes amid news that Musk's $44 billion acquisition deal of the social media platform is temporarily put on hold
Billionaire Elon Musk claimed that the Twitter legal team has accused him of violating non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
This comes amid news that Musk's $44 billion acquisition deal of the social media platform is temporarily put on hold.
"Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened," Musk wrote on Twitter.
Musk said on Friday that his plan to buy Twitter is temporarily on hold as he tries to pinpoint the exact number of spam and fake accounts on the social media platform, another twist amid signs of turmoil over the proposed $44 billion acquisition.
Musk has been vocal about his desire to clean up Twitter's problem with spam bots that mimic real people and appeared to question whether the company was underreporting them.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than five per cent of users, Musk said, indicating he is skeptical that the number of inauthentic accounts is that low.
It wasn't clear whether the issue could scuttle the deal. Musk later tweeted that he's still committed to acquisition. Neither Twitter nor Musk responded Friday to requests for comment.
The problem of fake accounts on Twitter is not a secret.
In its quarterly filing with the SEC, even Twitter doubted that its count of bot accounts was correct, conceding that the estimate may be low.
In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated, the filing says.
A review of Twitter filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the estimate of spam bot accounts and similar language expressing doubts about it have been in Twitter's quarterly and annual reports for at least two years, well before Musk made his offer and it would have been known to him and his advisors.
