Elon Musk’s big move after bombshell from Twitter whistleblower

Elon Musk is heading to court after a Twitter whistleblower, a former top executive, accused the company of “lying about bots” to the Tesla billionaire.

Elon Musk will push for access to Twitter’s internal geolocation data related to spam accounts at his court hearing on Wednesday after it was revealed a former top executive accused the company of “lying about bots” to the billionaire Tesla boss.

The geolocation data could help Musk better analyse Twitter’s fake account problem, one source close to the case told New York Post.

The in-person hearing in Musk’s ongoing legal battle to scrap his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter is scheduled for 1.30pm (US time) at the Delaware Court of Chancery, according to court filings.

Musk is likely hoping that his case will be bolstered by ex-security chief Peiter Zatko, who filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission in July accusing Twitter of “lying about bots to Elon Musk”.

Elon Musk is set to push for access to Twitter’s internal geolocation data related to spam accounts. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Musk hopes Mr Zatko’s complaint will sway Judge Kathaleen McCormick to grant his legal team’s request for the vital data, a source following the case said, although that is not a given.

Mr Zatko’s complaint claims that Twitter’s leadership is financially incentivised to enhance user numbers instead of cracking down on bots.

Musk has repeatedly accused Twitter of covering up a bot problem as part of his effort to get out of his $US44 billion ($A63.5 billion) takeover deal.

In Mr Zatko’s complaint, which was first reported by CNN and the Washington Post on Tuesday, the former executive claims that Twitter’s C-suite could be paid bonuses worth up to $US10 million ($A14.4 million) if they boosted the number of users, therefore incentivising them to ignore the site’s widespread issue with spam accounts.

“Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots,” the complaint said.

“Senior management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts … they were concerned that if accurate measurements ever became public, it would harm the image and valuation of the company.”

Peiter Zatko, is known in the industry for his history of exposing software flaws, under the handle ‘Mudge’. He has worked for Google and Twitter. Picture: Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

While Mr Zatko’s complaint accuses Twitter of everything from misleading the Federal Trade Commission to letting an Indian government agent have “access to vast amounts of Twitter sensitive data”, a source following the case said Musk’s legal team is expected to focus on the bot claims, which line up with accusations that the Tesla CEO has been making for months.

Mr Zatko also claimed that an unnamed senior Twitter executive tried to shut down a key internal tool called “read-only phone only” that was used for fighting bots and spam accounts.

He claimed the executive sought to shut down the feature after “receiving a small number of unsolicited DMs [direct messages]”.

Washington Post cited three anonymous sources that claimed the unnamed senior executive was Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s former head of consumer product who was fired by CEO Parag Agrawal earlier this year.

Musk’s legal team has already been granted permission from the Delaware Court of Chancery to obtain records from Mr Beykpour.

Musk weighed in on the whistleblower’s claims on Tuesday, tweeting a screenshot of the Washington Post story and writing: “So spam prevalence *was* shared with the board, but the board chose not to disclose that to the public.”

So spam prevalence *was* shared with the board, but the board chose not disclose that to the public … pic.twitter.com/lXk48TFZL1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 23, 2022

He also posted a tweet of an emoji raising its eyebrow in response to another story about the whistleblower.

Twitter shares closed down 7.4 per cent at $US39.86 ($A57.53) on Tuesday. The company wants to force the SpaceX boss to go through with his deal to buy Twitter for $US54.20 ($A78.23) per share.

Mr Zatko was fired from Twitter in January this year – months before Musk initially tried to buy the social media platform – due to what the site claimed was “ineffective leadership and poor performance” in a statement to The Post.

“What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

“Mr Zatko’s allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be.”

One of Musk’s lawyers, Alex Spiro, told The Post: “We have already issued a subpoena for Mr Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was republished with permission