Court orders Twitter to provide "more data" on spam accounts to Elon Musk

Microblogging company, Twitter, was ordered to give away more information about spam and bot accounts to Elon Musk as part of its legal battle to make the billionaire complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social-media platform. 

Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled that Twitter must provide information about 9,000 accounts it surveyed last year to identify which had bots as well as human beings attached to them. Twitter sought to deny Musk access to this “historical snapshot” on privacy and other grounds. 

Twitter also “must produce documents sufficient to show how those 9,000 accounts were selected for review,” McCormick said in her ruling. At a hearing on Wednesday, Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter counterparts of stonewalling them on the fake accounts' information.

Musk has said, "Misleading information put out by Twitter about the number of spam and bot accounts gives him a valid reason to exit his bid for the platform". Twitter argues that he’s legally handcuffed by the merger agreement and must complete the deal. 

The ruling on the bot survey was only among many orders McCormick issued on Thursday to resolve discovery issues raised by both sides in the case. The judge didn’t give Musk everything he wanted on the bots issue, noting his demands for the data were “absurdly broad.” 

She also ruled that Twitter didn’t have to broaden the date range of the documents it’s offering to Musk on the question of whether spam and robot accounts make up more than the 5 per cent disclosed in the firm’s securities filings. But she also said that Musk’s lawyers could withhold reports from their computer experts’ digging into the bot issues as privileged-work product. 

While Twitter has to hand over details on some 9,000 accounts, McCormick warned they are subject to strict confidentiality rules. “The historical-snapshot data that I have ordered produced is highly sensitive,” the judge said, adding that Musk’s lawyers agreed to “treat this data as highly confidential.” 

At a hearing earlier this week, one of Twitter’s lawyers raised concerns over Musk’s propensity for sharing confidential data in some of his tweets. Bradley Wilson, one of the platform’s attorneys, reminded McCormick that Twitter was being asked to turn over user data to “someone who publicly mocked” the company and threatened to disclose its internal data. 

Both sides are readying for an October 17 trial, sending out summons to equity investors, advisers and banks involved in the proposed acquisition. Earlier this week, Twitter's former security chief, Peiter Zatko, alleged that the influential social network misled regulators about its cyber defenses and efforts to control fake accounts.