Home » US business news » Elon Musk will not get access to ‘trillions upon trillions’ of Twitter data points, judge rules
Elon Musk will not get access to ‘trillions upon trillions’ of Twitter data points, judge rules
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By Nithya Bose in US business news, posted August 26, 2022
Elon Musk will not get all of the information he wants from Twitter after a judge called the request "absurdly broad."
However, the Tesla billionaire will get a narrower section of Twitter data on spam and fake accounts, as the row over his $44 billion takeover rumbles on.
Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick said that Musk’s demand to get “trillions upon trillions of data points” of over 200 million users were highly burdensome.
She added: “No one in their right mind has ever tried to undertake such an effort.”
READ MORE: ELON MUSK AND TWITTER LEGAL BATTLE HEATS UP AFTER WHISTLEBLOWER REVEALS SECURITY WEAKNESSES
However, Twitter must hand over a historical snapshot of accounts the company has reviewed in order to calculate the number of spam and fake accounts.
It will contain 9,000 accounts reviewed as part of its fourth-quarter 2021 audit, as well as documents detailing how those accounts were picked for review.
During the hearing, the social media platform stated that it could obtain such records in less than two weeks "with considerable effort."
The judge said Twitter “must strive to meet that timeline.”
The calculation of spam and bogus accounts is at the core of the dispute over Musk's attempt to cancel the merger deal and prove his counterclaim of fraud.
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Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro said: “We look forward to reviewing the data Twitter has been hiding for many months.”
Musk is also looking to verify Twitter's disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It includes the estimates that less than five percent of monetizable daily active users, or MDAUs, are bogus or spam accounts.
Chancellor McCormick said Twitter already agreed to disclose 10 broad categories of documents in response to Mr. Musk's requests for information on MDAUs.
She ruled Twitter to submit a subset of further records from its database, namely documents representing discussion of any other key metric identified by Mr. Musk's team.
The judge also ordered Twitter to submit documents from its board of directors and management.
Twitter declined to comment on the judge’s decision.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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