Musk threatens to abandon acquisition! Twitter gives in and says it will provide fake account data!

Elon Musk's lawyers warned Twitter on Monday that the world's richest man might abandon the acquisition if Twitter fails to provide the spam and fake account data Musk seeks. The reason is that Musk doubted Twitter's claim that fake and spam accounts account for less than 5% of its 229 million user base.

In a letter to Twitter's chief legal officer on June 6, Musk's lawyers said Twitter's "resistance and obstruction" violated the right to access Twitter's company data and information stipulated in the agreement. Refusing to provide this information is a "material breach" of the transaction agreement, which means Musk can abandon the acquisition without paying a $1 billion penalty.

To this end, Twitter has said it will meet Musk's request for fake account data and provide a data stream with more than 500 million posts per day. According to people familiar with the matter, part of the data is the "firehose", which includes all tweets on the platform analyzed by different parameters, such as the user's device or the account profile that posted the tweet.

Twitter sells the data to social media monitoring companies as part of its licensing business but now plans to give it to Musk for free in the face of Musk's threat to abandon the deal, the sources said. The data does not contain confidential information, such as personal details of Twitter users that are not publicly available or how often they verify their accounts, the sources added.

Fake or spam accounts, known as bots, are automated and not run by human users. Bots might use automated replies or send ads or scams directly to users, or try to influence public discourse by posting political propaganda. While Twitter has stuck to the 5% weighting in its quarterly earnings reports since 2014, Musk has questioned whether advertisers, which provide the bulk of Twitter's revenue, are getting their money's worth because of the bot problem.

It is unclear how much confidential information Twitter will share about its user base with Musk, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter expects to hold a shareholder vote on Musk's deal in late July or early August, Twitter's chief lawyer Vijaya Gadde said at a staff meeting.

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