A judge has ordered Twitter to give Elon Musk the data from its 2021 users audit, in which the social media giant sampled 9,000 accounts to gauge the number of spam accounts on the site.
The Tesla Tycoon has been attempting to back out of his original agreement to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, and claimed the site failed to disclose information about the volume of bot and spam accounts on the social media platform prior to striking the deal.
A lawsuit was subsequently filed against Musk in Delaware for attempted breach of contract.
Twitter previously claimed the data from the audit did not exist, and that it would be difficult to acquire.
Delaware Court of Chancery chancellor Kathleen McCormick gave Twitter two weeks to turn over the user data from the 2021 audit to Musk, however the Space X founder’s other requests were dismissed as “absurdly broad.”
“Defendants’ data requests are absurdly broad. Read literally, defendants’ documents request would require plaintiff to produce trillions upon trillions of data points,” wrote McCormick.
Twitter said it wanted Musk to purchase the platform at the originally agreed price of $54.20 per share. Shares in the company are currently trading at $41.12, representing a rather significant decline of $13.08.
A five day trial regarding the acquisition dispute has been scheduled for 17 October 2022.
