When Tesla CEO Elon Musk began publicly questioning whether Twitter was being truthful about the percentage of its users that are spam/bots, many questioned his commitment to the $44 billion deal. When the billionaire then announced the deal was "temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," critics saw that as further proof he was either looking for a way out or hoping to renegotiate the price.
Earlier this week, the deal looked like it really may fall through after Musk's attorneys threatened to end it if the social media company didn't give Musk the data he requested to determine if Twitter was being truthful about its 5 percent figure.
Now, it looks like the social media giant is finally cooperating, according to The Washington Post.
After a weeks-long impasse, Twitter’s board plans to comply with Elon Musk’s demands for internal data by offering access to its full “firehose,” the massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted each day, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the state of negotiations. [...]
In the Monday letter addressed to Twitter’s general counsel, Vijaya Gadde, Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of refusing to provide information about spam and fake accounts that the billionaire, who is the world’s richest man, has been requesting since May 9.
Musk “must have a complete and accurate understanding of the very core of Twitter’s business model — its active user base,” stated the lawyers from the firm Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. “Twitter’s latest offer to simply provide additional details regarding the company’s own testing methodologies, whether through written materials or verbal explanations, is tantamount to refusing Mr. Musk’s data requests.” (WaPo)
According to WaPo's source, the information could get to Musk this week.
The billionaire has not yet commented on the report, but he has said all along he's "still committed to acquisition."
