Elon Musk’s legal team attempted to include the word “Trump” in a search of Twitter’s internal communications in an attempt to understand the company’s bot problem amid its attempts to justify ending his acquisition of the social media network in court.
The legal team alleged that the presence of the former president’s name is connected to spam accounts, according to unsealed documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
MUSK RESEARCHERS FAILED TO FIND ENOUGH BOTS TO JUSTIFY END OF TWITTER DEAL
“Trump is relevant for the reasons we explained, namely that the name is often associated with spam, false accounts, and bots,” argued Musk attorney Silpa Maruri in a July 29 email exchange made public as part of Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk.
Twitter’s legal team dismissed the notion, arguing that the company was “unpersuaded” by the need to look for the keyword “Trump” due to him being among “many irrelevant subjects” that would result in too many search results.
Trump was accompanied by many keywords requested by Musk’s team, including “Bangalore” and “New Delhi,” according to the emails. The terms were desired due to Musk’s team learning that “Twitter filed a lawsuit against the government in Bangalore challenging orders blocking certain user accounts” and the Big Tech company failing to disclose the lawsuit as part of the merger agreement.
Musk has been attempting to justify his decision to end the deal to acquire Twitter through his team’s legal proceedings and discoveries. The latest development found that researchers hired by Musk were unable to provide sufficient evidence to confirm that Twitter had 20% or more bots on its platform.
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The two parties are scheduled to meet in court in the Delaware Court of Chancery in October to resolve conflicts involving Musk’s termination of the contract. Musk has been attempting to prove that Twitter lied about its proceedings, while Twitter has focused on establishing that Musk got cold feet and withdrew from the deal after Tesla’s stock value dropped.
