Twitter must provide Musk with more information about the percentage of fake accounts on the platform

A court in Delaware has ordered Twitter to provide more data to Elon Musk regarding how the company verifies bots and fake accounts on the platform, but Musk’s ‘absurdly broad’ requests for information about the entire user base have not been approved, reported the Financial Times. Each day brings us closer to October 17, the trial date on which it will be decided whether Musk is compelled to proceed with $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, and the lawyers representing him have requested more data and documentation detailing how many users are legitimate and how many bots were used for covert advertising.

As a reminder, the main reason for Musk’s attempt to withdraw from the Twitter purchase agreement is primarily focused on the claim that Twitter underestimated the number of fake accounts on the platform, and the transaction was first agreed upon in April before the decline in stock values in the tech sector, after which Twitter’s market value fell to just below $32 billion.

Twitter’s lawyer Bradley Wilson stated at a recent hearing that the platform has been honest in presenting data indicating that less than five percent of accounts are fake. He also emphasized that the company made a ‘significant judgment’ in calculating monetized daily active users, or mDAUs.

Kathaleen McCormick, the judge overseeing the entire case, subsequently ordered Twitter to provide information on nine thousand accounts that were analyzed for authenticity in last year’s audit. The platform must also share some data related to other internal discussions or analyses concerning key measurements of Twitter’s user base beyond the mDAU metric.

The judge did agree with Twitter’s position that producing all the data Musk requested on his more than 200 million mDAUs is excessive.

– Musk’s request for documents would require the plaintiff to produce trillions of data points. Twitter is struggling to quantify the burden of responding to that request because no one in their right mind has attempted such a thing – she stated.

Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, stated that his team is eager to review the data that Twitter has allegedly been hiding for months. The platform declined to comment, and this information could help Tesla’s CEO prove that Twitter misled investors about the magnitude of the fake account problem.

Spiro also claims that Twitter’s creation of its own mDAU metric is a clever operation aimed at impressing Wall Street and providing cover for stagnant growth and the growing spam problem on the social network.

Former Twitter security chief, Peiter Zatko, revealed to U.S. regulators and members of Congress a separate whistleblower complaint that includes similar claims about active users. It is worth noting that Zatko was fired from the company in January of this year, and he is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 13.

Interestingly, this call comes at a time when his claims are being investigated, which include allegations that Twitter’s cybersecurity was weak and that foreign powers had interfered with the platform. Musk also conducted his own analysis of Twitter users this month, stating that at least 10 percent of users are fake bots, compared to their estimate of ‘less than five percent.’