A second Twitter whistleblower is considering testifying when Elon Musk confronts the company in court over his $44 billion acquisition bid later in two weeks. He may have some interesting things to say regarding bots.
The potential second tipster would concentrate on an alleged internal study concluding that the site’s bot problem is much larger than Twitter has acknowledged, in contrast to Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a Twitter whistleblower who did not mention the words “bots” or “spam” once during his two-and-a-half-hour Congressional testimony in September.
An ex-employee of Twitter, the would-be whistleblower, claims to have contributed to an internal study from a few years back that claimed at least 30% of Twitter’s daily active users are automated fake accounts that are spam.
In texts with Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, made fun of Facebook. On April 6, Dorsey texted: “Looks like there’s a verified’ account in the swamp of misery over there.” The text, which reveals how the executive discussed the competing social network in private, was made public on Thursday as part of the pretrial discovery process for Twitter’s case against Musk.
It was one of countless texts sent and received by Musk from some of the most influential businessmen in Silicon Valley, including Larry Ellison and Reid Hoffman. After trying to back out of the deal in July, the social networking company is suing Musk to make him acquire the business for $44 billion.
Wednesday’s witness lists could provide insight into whether the second whistleblower will show up. Musk’s team served a subpoena on Zatko, but none was served on the second whistleblower as of yet.
