Elon Musk's push to get out of his $44 billion acquisition agreement of Twitter has become even more controversial. The latest development is the Tesla CEO subpoenaing former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, as reported by TechCrunch. Dorsey will reportedly be asked about just how big the impact of bots and spam accounts is on the social media platform.
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CEO, and chief engineer at SpaceX, Elon Musk, arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York. - The Gala raises money for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. The Gala's 2022 theme is "In America: An Anthology of Fashion".
NPR reports that Musk's attorneys are seeking documents and communications from Dorsey about how Twitter detects, labels, and count fake accounts. Musk's legal team also wants to know from Dorsey how it uses daily active users as a key metric in its financial disclosures.
Dorsey has stepped down as the social media's CEO in November 2021 and handed the role over to Parag Agrawal, which is the current CEO of Twitter. Over the past few months, Dorsey showed his support for Musk. In fact, he even said that Musk is the best person to operate Twitter.
Musk's legal team has been sending subpoenas to several people in the last few weeks. They have subpoenaed Kayvon Bekpour, the former head of consumer product of Twitter, and Bruce Falck, the former revenue and product lead of the social media company.
Also read: Jack Dorsey Quashed Rumors About Being Twitter's CEO, Says 'No One Ultimately' Should Be
Upcoming Trial
Twitter's bid to get Musk to follow through with his bid to acquire the social media platform will officially go to trial on October 17. Initially, Musk wanted to delay the trial until next February, but a judge ruled that Twitter could speed up proceedings to October of this year.
There have been a lot of "plot twists" since the social media platform accepted Musk's bid to purchase Twitter. However, Musk decided that he didn't want to buy the social platform after all, in which he cited that Twitter wasn't clear about their bot data, and claimed that they weren't honest with him about how much of its customer base is made up of robot and spam accounts.
Musk also claims that Twitter tried to mislead investors by providing them with false numbers in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On the other hand, Twitter says their SEC filings are accurate and Musk's team has spent months trying to invent a spam disclosure problem but only found nothing. They also claims that Musk's efforts to finance the deal ran out of steam, which then contradicts the legal arguments coming from him.
Twitter has been pushing to close the deal through legal action. It was recently revealed that the social platform spent $33 million in the previous quarter on the pending acquisition.
Related article: Elon Musk vs Twitter: Judge Schedules Trial in October 17
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Written by: April Fowell
