San Francisco: Elon Musk’s lawyers jumped Wednesday on the revelations of a Twitter whistleblower to try to force the platform to surrender vast amounts of information for their fight to cancel the billionaire’s buyout bid.
The Tesla boss’s team told a US judge the former Twitter security chief’s allegations of major security gaps and problematic practices had bolstered their case, which has struggled for momentum in court. Musk has tried to back out of the $44 billion agreement by saying Twitter misled him on the number of false or spam accounts, prompting strong denials and a lawsuit from the social media firm.
Musk attorney Alex Spiro cited repeatedly Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko in a 90- minute hearing on what data the firm should be forced to hand over ahead of their October trial.
“The way Mr. Zatko puts it, management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts,” Spiro told Judge Kathaleen McCormick in a court in the eastern state of Delaware. Twitter won some early battles in the case, including a fast-track trial date, and its stock had risen as analysts have predicted the platform would prevail over the mercurial billionaire.
