Twitter denies Musk fraud allegation in fake account litigation

Twitter called the claims false and irrelevant in a high-profile legal battle over whether the billionaire can walk out of a $44 billion deal dollars to acquire the company.< /p>

Twitter accused Elon Musk, in a lawsuit, of having abandoned his plan to acquire the company because the stock market turbulence made the operation more difficult for him. But retaliating in a legal filing, Mr. Musk says it was Twitter that torpedoed the $44 billion acquisition.

Mr. Musk claims Twitter concealed the true number of inauthentic accounts on its platform, accusing the company of fraud. Those accounts accounted for at least 10% of Twitter's daily active users who see ads, Musk's legal team said, reiterating concerns he raised shortly after the deal was signed in April. Twitter claimed the figure is less than 5%.

Twitter also hid the number of its users who see ads, Mr. Musk's lawyers said in the dossier, which was made public on Thursday. During the first quarter of the year, 65 million of the company's 229 million daily active users did not see ads, according to the filing.

Twitter said Mr. Musk was trying to "distort data received from Twitter to sponsor outlandish conclusions" and that his numbers were accurate.

Help of Botometer, a tool designed by Indiana University to measure inauthentic accounts, analysts said because Mr. Musk found a higher number of inauthentic accounts than Twitter had disclosed, according to the filing. Their analysis was preliminary and will be expanded, according to the filing.

The misrepresentations hid weaknesses in Twitter's business model and prompted Mr. Musk to agree to buy Twitter at "an inflated price". price," Tesla executive attorneys said.

"Twitter was misrecording the number of fake accounts and spam on its platform, as part of of his scheme to mislead investors about the company's prospects,” Mr. Musk's lawyers wrote. "Twitter's disclosures have slowly unraveled, with Twitter frantically closing the doors to information in a desperate attempt to prevent the Musk parties from uncovering his fraud." Friday, but kept confidential until Thursday, was Mr Musk's first in-depth response in what is expected to be a protracted legal battle between the social media company and one of the world's richest people. A trial is scheduled for October.

"His claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant," said Bret Taylor, chairman of the Twitter's board of directors, in a statement on Thursday. The company also responded to Mr. Musk's claims in a legal filing.

The Botometer tool is unreliable, Twitter said in its filing. The company noted that the tool used different standards than Twitter's internal calculations and had once considered Mr. Musk's Twitter account to be "highly likely to be a bot".

Mr. Musk began acquiring shares of Twitter earlier this year and by April he had become the company's largest shareholder. He rejected Twitter's offer to join its board, instead launching a swift and aggressive takeover bid. But once Twitter accepted the acquisition, Mr. Musk began to express doubts. In July, he indicated that he no longer wanted to buy the company.

Twitter sued Mr. Musk in Delaware Chancery Court in an attempt to force the acquisition. Twitter claimed it lost interest in the deal as the market crashed and shares of Twitter and electric car maker Tesla, which is Mr Musk's main source of wealth, fell.

"Musk refuses to...