Twitter to share data with Musk as it presses ahead with vote on $44bn deal

Twitter has agreed to share a vast trove of data about the content on its platform with Elon Musk, after the billionaire entrepreneur threatened to abandon his $44bn acquisition of the social media company if it did not provide more information about fake accounts and bots. 

The San Francisco company also told employees internally on Wednesday it expects to hold a shareholder vote on the deal by early August, according to a person familiar with the situation. 

Twitter’s board plans to share the “firehose” of publicly available data about tweets with Musk that it typically sells to social media monitoring companies, one person said.

The firehose includes a real-time stream of tweets, and information such as the devices they are written from. However it does not include private user information such as IP addresses, which Twitter has previously suggested is crucial to how it assesses for fake accounts. 

The news, which was first reported by the Washington Post, comes after Musk’s lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom on Monday said in a letter to Twitter’s legal chief that the company had “refused to provide the information that [he] has repeatedly requested since May 9” on how it calculates the number of fake accounts and spam bots on the platform. 

Musk has challenged Twitter’s long-stated estimate that less than 5 per cent of its daily active users are bots, threatening to walk away from the deal unless the platform provides proof. 

Musk’s lawyers said on Monday that by “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights”, this constituted a “clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations” that would allow Musk to “terminate the merger agreement”.

One person close to Twitter’s board said Musk’s team had previously requested access to the firehose data, but his team had been previously reticent to agree the non-disclosure agreements and other privacy terms stipulated for those accessing it. 

The person noted that Musk’s lawyers had said in the letter on Monday that any third parties reviewing the data would adhere to an NDA and that Musk would not retain or otherwise use “competitively sensitive information” if the deal did not close.

Musk’s team sent Twitter the data requests amid speculation that Musk is seeking an excuse to renegotiate or walk away from the deal as the tech market cools. 

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment but said: “Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” 

The spokesperson reiterated a previous statement that the company “believes this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders” and “intends to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms”. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.