Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has subpoenaed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in the midst of the ongoing legal battle over the future ownership of the social media platform.
Musk made a deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion earlier this year. In June, the Tesla CEO attempted to pull out of the deal, arguing that the company’s disclosed quantity of bot accounts is inaccurate, claiming the number could be as high as 33%, rather than Twitter’s reported 5%. A lower number of monetizable daily active users than the number Twitter has reported could justify a lower company valuation.
The move prompted a lawsuit from Twitter, locking the two in a legal battle with Twitter trying to force the completion of the deal and Musk attempting to terminate the arrangement. The trial to determine the outcome is scheduled for October.
Musk is therefore subpoenaing Dorsey, who resigned at the end of last year and was replaced by then CTO Parag Agrawal, attempting to obtain documents related to “the impact or effect of false or spam accounts on Twitter’s business and operations … or Twitter’s use of mDAU as a ‘Key Metric.’”
The subpoena also asks Dorsey to provide “any process or workflow, other than the mDAU Audit and the suspension workflow, that Twitter uses, has used, or has discussed or considered using to detect and label accounts as spam or false,” according to court documents obtained by The Verge.
“Mr. Musk and his financial advisors at Morgan Stanley have been requesting critical information from Twitter as far back as May 9, 2022 — and repeatedly since then — on the relationship between Twitter’s disclosed mDAU figures and the prevalence of false or spam accounts on the platform,” the attorneys wrote last month. “Notwithstanding these repeated requests over the past two months, Twitter has still failed to provide much of the data and information responsive to Mr. Musk’s repeated requests.”
Twitter’s lawsuit still maintains that Musk is required to complete the deal. “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” the lawsuit said. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”
Dorsey and Musk have been on good terms in the past, appearing at a bitcoin event together last summer. Dorsey was in favor of Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
“In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company,” Dorsey explained. “Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”
Musk has reportedly considered refurbishing the website X.com as a new social media platform if the Twitter deal does not come to fruition. X.com was a co-founded effort by the entrepreneur to create an online bank in 1999. The company would go on to merge with Cofinity and become PayPal. Musk repurchased the domain name in 2017 since it has “sentimental value.” Musk has also said that, if the user data proves Twitter’s initial claims of low bot account population, he would be willing to go through with the deal.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.