Twitter Finally Giving Elon Musk What He Wants?
In response to Musk's relentless request for more information, Twitter is finally giving the billionaire the keys to the kingdom.
This article is more than 2 years old
Ever since Elon Musk announced that he was going to purchase social media giant Twitter back in April, the whole thing has turned into somewhat of a saga. There has been pushback from employees and shareholders. Active investigations are being conducted by the SEC to ensure that Musk’s purchase of Twitter checks all of the legality boxes. Then, to further complicate matters, Musk recently asserted that he would back out of the deal entirely unless Twitter could provide him with irrefutable proof that less than 5% of all its active users consisted of fake/bot-run accounts. Now, in response to his request, The New York Times reported that Twitter is essentially giving Musk the keys to the kingdom.
On Monday Musk’s lawyers blatantly asked Twitter to provide their client with the information that he requested via a letter that was drafted. The letter asserted that Elon Musk would not move forward with the purchase unless Twitter conceded to his request. They emphasized Musk’s need for a complete picture and went so far as to accuse the social media platform of not living up to the obligations that they have to their buyer.
In response, Twitter has maintained that they have been completely transparent in providing Musk with any information that he needed. However, since, Musk has repeatedly and publicly vocalized his dissatisfaction, the social media behemoth has decided to provide him with unlimited access to the 500 million tweets that are posted on its platform daily. Essentially, what Twitter is saying with this maneuver is that if Musk isn’t happy with the statistics they have provided him with, he is now free to extrapolate his own.
At this point, it is unclear how Musk will react to this virtually unlimited stream of user information that Twitter has granted him. He will likely need to round up his own team of experts to make sense of it. But regardless of his reaction, a lot more still needs to happen before the deal can go through. First and foremost, the deal has to be officially approved by Twitter’s collective of shareholders. And there is still the whole mess with some of the shareholders suing Musk that needs to be sorted out.
Additionally, there has been a lot of speculation as to whether or not Musk has gotten cold feet and is trying to look for loopholes to back out of the deal altogether. “What he is actually doing is a much more clever attempt to get out of the merger agreement,” reasoned Ann Lipton, who works as a professor of corporate governance at Tulane Law School, in regards to Musk’s behavior. However, the actions Musk takes subsequent to him receiving the information from Twitter should clarify any ulterior motives should he have any.
Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he has opened his own investigation to determine the number of fake and/or bot-run accounts that exist on Twitter at any given time. The New York Times pointed out that strategists are theorizing that this is likely being done so Texas will be perceived favorably by Musk, especially given that Tesla is newly headquartered in the state. As an added benefit, Paxton’s move to investigate fake Twitter accounts also aligns with the state’s political agenda to pass a new social media censorship law.
