Twitter has reportedly decided to give Elon Musk data about fake accounts on the platform following persistent complaints from the billionaire. The drama over Musk's Twitter acquisition reached a crescendo recently when the billionaire announced that he won't move forward with the deal until he's furnished with details about the number of bots on the platform. The threat came several weeks after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO made a $44 billion offer to buy Twitter and take it private.
Over the past couple of months, the world has been abuzz about what Musk's acquisition of Twitter might mean for the platform. While some believe he will help restore free speech on the world's largest micro-blogging service, others believe that it could result in Twitter becoming a toxic hellscape of hate speech and misinformation. However, all that would be a non-starter if Musk follows through with his threat and abandons plans of acquiring the company over the supposed lack of data regarding spam accounts.
According to a report by The Washington Post, Twitter's board has agreed to hand over the company's internal data to Musk to help him calculate the number of fake users on the platform. The data, which will reportedly be given to Musk this week, is said to include information about more than 500 million Tweets posted each day. According to an unnamed source quoted by the publication, the information would include not only a real-time record of Tweets, but also details about the devices that the Tweets come from, as well as the accounts that post those Tweets.
Will Musk Go Through With The Twitter Deal?
If the report is accurate, this would mark a 180-degree shift in Twitter's stance within a few short days. Talking about Musk's demand to see Twitter's internal data on bots, CEO Parag Agarwal recently said that company has no plans to disclose proprietary information to outsiders. However, Musk's continued pressure now seems to have paid off as the Twitter board has seemingly agreed to share the information with him. Meanwhile, despite growing concerns about the deal possibly falling through at the last hurdle, Twitter executives seem to be confident about the deal going through smoothly. According to a Bloomberg report, Twitter's top lawyer Vijaya Gadde told the company's staff this week that the deal was still on and that a shareholder vote is set for late July or early August.
Elon Musk is unpredictable at the best of times, and has been even more so in the last couple of months. While many thought Musk was joking when he first hinted at the possibility of launching a social media network back in March, he surprised everyone by first buying a 9.2 percent stake in the company in early April before making a hostile bid to acquire the entire company for $44 billion. While this offer was initially rejected, the Twitter board eventually had a change of heart and accepted the bid, paving the way for the drama that followed. Now that Musk will be provided with all the data he asked for, it will be interesting to see if he will accept it and move forward with the Twitter deal or find something else to complain about.
Source: The Washington Post, Bloomberg