Twitter will give Musk user data amid takeover impasse: report

Twitter’s board will yield to Elon Musk’s demands that the company provide information on the number of fake accounts on the platform as his purchase of Twitter remains pending, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. 

The agreement could help put Musk’s deal to acquire Twitter for $44 million back on track after the billionaire threatened to put the process “on hold” unless the company could prove that bot accounts make up less than 5 percent of all users.

The board will provide Musk its full data “firehose” of more than 500 million tweets posted daily, the Post reported, citing a person “familiar with the company’s thinking.” Axios also confirmed the data agreement.

The Post reported that the data includes a real-time record of tweets posted, the devices they come from and information about the accounts that post them, and could be provided to Musk as early as this week.

Musk made a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, claiming Twitter was “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” under the acquisition agreement.

A spokesperson for Twitter said after the filing the company has been continuing to “cooperatively” share information with Musk, per the terms of the purchase agreement. 

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on The Post’s report, deferring to the company’s statement from Monday. Musk did not immediately return a request for comment. 

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal published a Twitter thread last month sharing how the company works to eliminate spam accounts, but Musk questioned Twitter’s estimate that 5 percent of its users were fake accounts in the Monday filing. 

Musk’s deal to buy Twitter has cleared a Federal Trade Commission review but still needs approval from Twitter stockholders and other regulatory approvals before being finalized.

Updated: June 9 at 2:12 p.m.