Twitter Said to Agree to Give Elon Musk Access to Stream of Tweets

Elon Musk has threatened to pull out of a $44 billion deal for Twitter, saying the company has refused to give him details about its faux accounts.

So Twitter now plans to give Mr. Musk entry to a big swath of its knowledge, probably down to its final tweet.

The social media company has agreed to enable Mr. Musk direct entry to its “firehose,” the stream of billions of tweets that circulation by way of the company’s community every day, in accordance to an individual with data of the choice. Whether Mr. Musk will get full or partial entry to that “firehose” is unclear.

The info would give Mr. Musk the instruments to discern what number of accounts on Twitter’s platform could also be faux. But it should almost definitely not assist him attain Twitter’s conclusion that 5 % of its energetic accounts are faux, because the company makes use of a special methodology involving proprietary knowledge and human evaluation to get to that determine. Mr. Musk has mentioned he doesn’t consider that simply 5 % of Twitter’s energetic accounts are faux.

Twitter’s transfer might make it tougher for Mr. Musk to terminate the deal. On Monday, his attorneys despatched a letter to the company, accusing it of stonewalling his efforts to get hold of info that was important to closing the deal. For weeks, Mr. Musk has additionally tweeted more and more barbed feedback about Twitter’s faux accounts, showing to lay the groundwork to renegotiate or get out of the settlement.

Mr. Musk agreed to purchase Twitter in April for $54.20 a share. If the deal falls aside, there’s a $1 billion breakup payment. But the settlement features a “specific performance clause,” which provides Twitter the proper to sue him and drive him to full or pay for the deal, as long as the debt financing he has corralled stays intact.

A Twitter spokesman declined to touch upon giving Mr. Musk entry to the stream of tweets, however referred to a earlier assertion.

“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,” Twitter has mentioned. “We believe this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders. We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.”

Mr. Musk didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. The Washington Post earlier reported on his gaining entry to the Twitter firehose.

A company typically shares confidential knowledge with its acquirer as half of a transaction and the parameters round knowledge sharing are negotiated earlier than signing any deal. But Mr. Musk waived due diligence when he agreed to purchase the social media company and Twitter started sharing confidential info with him final month.

One of Twitter’s issues with sharing info has been Mr. Musk’s prior statements, each publicly and to the company, that he was contemplating beginning a rival social media service, The New York Times has reported. Typically, such issues are addressed by limiting who would have entry to such info.

Mr. Musk has mentioned he’ll be certain that anybody reviewing confidential knowledge supplied by Twitter shall be certain by a nondisclosure settlement. He has additionally mentioned he wouldn’t retain or share delicate details about Twitter if the deal fell aside.

Twitter has calculated that 5 % of its “monetizeable daily active users” are faux. In April, the company reported it had 229 million monetizeable every day energetic customers.

Once Mr. Musk receives entry to Twitter’s stream of tweets, he’s possible to want a staff of consultants to analyze the information, in addition to the computing capability to course of and retailer the big quantity of info, company insiders mentioned.