Elon Musk has eked out a legal victory in his battle with Twitter, as a judge has ordered information about fake accounts to be handed over to Musk.
Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick handed Musk a defeat as well in ruling that 21 other people from whom Musk wanted data do not have to provide him with information, according to TechSpot.
Information from Twitter’s former head of consumer product, Kayvon Beykpour, must be released.
According to Reuters, Musk’s team of lawyers had identified Beykpour as “a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform.”
Beykpour was fired by current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in May.
“We look forward to reviewing Beykpour’s communications and will continue to seek information and witnesses until the full truth comes out,” said Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, according to Bloomberg.
The issue of fake accounts emerged as a major bone of contention in Musk’s proposed purchase of the social media platform. Twitter estimates that about 5 percent of its accounts are bots. Musk has said the figure is closer to 20 percent.
Musk said he decided not to go through with the $44 billion deal because he could not verify the number of fake accounts. Twitter then took Musk to court to force him to buy the company.
Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli tech company Cyabra, agrees that Twitter has lowballed its number of fake accounts, according to Reuters.
“They have underestimated that number,” he said, putting the share of fake accounts at 13.7 percent.
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In a countersuit filed against Twitter, Musk argued that “misrepresentations or omissions” by the company have inflated Twitter’s actual value, The Washington Post reported.
The countersuit said Twitter has 65 million fewer monetizable daily active users — people who can be seeing ads — than the 238 million that Twitter says it has.
Twitter undercounted bots as part of a “scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects,” Musk’s countersuit alleged, according to The Guardian.
Lawyers for Musk and Twitter will meet in court in October to debate whether the deal must be completed, the Washington Examiner reported.
