Attorneys for Elon Musk issued a subpoena to Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko as part of the company’s ongoing lawsuit against the Tesla CEO, according to court filings Monday, after Zatko alleged the company intentionally undercounted and misrepresented the number of bots on the social network—similar to the argument Musk is using to get out of his Twitter deal as it goes to trial in October.
The subpoena, filed Monday in Delaware Chancery Court, asks Zatko to turn over a wide range of documents and communications regarding Twitter’s operations and his work at Twitter, including detailed information on bots and spam accounts and any “engagement in any unlawful activity” by Twitter.
Zatko filed a whistleblower complaint with the federal government in July alleging a wide range of misleading actions, “egregious” security violations and fraud, including that the company intentionally undercounts the number of bots on its platform.
Twitter has claimed that bot accounts make up only 5% of its Monetizable Daily Active Users (mDAUs), but Zatko’s complaint alleges Twitter “avoid[s] counting spam bots as mDAUs” and there’s “deliberate ignorance” among executive leadership about how many spam bots there actually are—meaning there might be millions more bots than the company actually claims.
That ties into the claims that Musk has used to try and get out of his deal to buy Twitter, as he’s argued Twitter’s 5% figure for spam bot accounts is false and the company...
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