(Chris Parker, Headline USA) Elon Musk‘s legal team has subpoenaed Twitter founder Jack Dorsey for documents relating to bots and spam accounts on the platform.
The subpoena comes as a legal battle continues between Musk and Twitter, reported the Daily Wire. Musk withdrew his bid to purchase the social media giant after accusing the company of providing an inaccurate estimate of the number of bots and spam accounts. Twitter then sued to force Musk to complete the sale.
Dorsey resigned as Twitter CEO last year, but Musk’s legal team still believes that he may possess key information. The filing requests Dorsey to provide “any process or workflow, other than the mDAU Audit and the suspension workflow, that Twitter uses, has used, or has discussed or considered using to detect and label accounts as spam or false.”
The mDAU measures the number of Twitter’s “monetizable daily active users.” In other words, it represents the number of true users to whom ads can be shown to generate revenue.
Since Twitter’s business model relies primarily on ad revenue, a lower number of actual users means a lower overall value for the platform.
Musks’s claim is that Twitter misrepresented its percentage of mDAU and bot metrics. Twitter claimed the number of bot and spam accounts was around 5%. Musk’s investigations found that it could be as high as 33%.
Musk recently said that the deal could be back on the table if Twitter would just provide their method of sampling.
“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk tweeted. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
Twitter declined to comment on his tweet. However, their legal team has previously argued that “Musk invents representations Twitter never made and then tries to wield, selectively, the extensive confidential data Twitter provided him to conjure a breach of those purported representations.”
Both parties are heading to court in October.
