Elon Musk is back in the headlines again. Surprised? Source: Wikimedia Commons
Twitter will reportedly cave in for billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s data demands, after the Tesla CEO threatened to pull out of the takeover deal worth $US44b ($A61b).
Musk recently stated the deal was “temporarily on hold” due to the 50-year-old wanting clarification on how many of the platform’s users were bots or spam accounts, something he’s been an open critic of.
The board will now acquiesce Musk’s demands, offering him access to the full cache of data of over 500 million daily posts on the platform.
The entrepreneur is considered extremely outspoken and opinionated on Twitter, with his personal account having just shy of 100 million followers and consistently trending with every post.
Musk accused Twitter of “resisting and thwarting” his right to information about fake account policy and data, claiming that up to half of the 229 million active users could be bogus; the social media platform says that number is closer to five per cent.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said last month that the company had already explained how it sorts through fake accounts.
“We shared an overview of the estimation process with Elon a week ago and look forward to continuing the conversation with him, and all of you,” he said.
“Spammers are sophisticated and hard to catch.”
The letter sent by Musk’s legal team on Monday said that he believes Twitter is “transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data due to concern for what Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover,” sparking a chain of media exchanges.
The letter also added that Musk reserved the right to terminate the agreement at any stage before the merger was finalised.
He could be hit with a $1 billion break-up fee if that happened, something which financial commentators described as “loose change” for the world’s richest man.
