He had threatened to withdraw his offer if Twitter did not provide him with what he wanted. Twitter’s board finally relented, according to the Washington Post, and now plans to give Elon Musk access to the data needed to answer his questions about the number of fake accounts. Until then, in the words of Elon Musk, the social network is “actively resisting” his requests for information about spam and bots (automated accounts).
The council of the Californian group should provide the multi-billionaire “a flood of data including some 500 million tweets published each day”, perhaps as early as this week, according to an article from the American daily published on Wednesday. The Washington Post bases this information on an anonymous source familiar with the negotiations. Twitter declined to comment.
Elon Musk filed a takeover bid for Twitter in April for $44 billion, after many twists and turns, from his entry into the capital without warning to a series of very critical messages from the social network. In mid-May, he announced that he was suspending the agreement with the board of directors (before reaffirming his intention to buy the platform), citing his doubts about the data transmitted by Twitter on spam and fake accounts, as well as than the measures taken to limit its proliferation.
Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter, unless…
The buyout agreement obliges the entrepreneur to complete the transaction, unless he can prove that the social network cheated him or that a major event changes his value. Both parties have pledged to pay severance pay of up to $1 billion in certain circumstances.
Twitter estimates that the number of fake accounts and spam on the social network represents less than 5% of its daily active users. But Elon Musk claims that the methodology used by the platform is not “adequate” and that he must conduct his “own analysis”.
On the New York Stock Exchange, Twitter’s stock hovered around $40 on Wednesday, a far cry from the $54.20 price offered by the world’s richest man in April.