Business Maverick: Musk gets a potential boost with Twitter whistle-blower’s claims

  • 📰 dailymaverick
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 37 sec. here
  • 2 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 18%
  • Publisher: 84%

South Africa News News

South Africa South Africa Latest News,South Africa South Africa Headlines

A whistleblower’s complaint alleging Twitter ignored a rash of spam and bot accounts could help Elon Musk in his effort to walk away from a $44-billion buyout of the social-media platform, legal experts say.

Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s ex-head of security, alerted US authorities to “egregious deficiencies” in the company’s defences against hackers, according to his complaint. Zatko, fired from Twitter earlier this year, said he raised concerns about the bots in early 2021 and was told by the head of site integrity that Twitter didn’t know how many bots were on the platform. His Twitter colleagues showed no interest in delving into the issue, according to the complaint.

In the complaint, Zatko said Twitter’s “Integrity Team” was reluctant to dig deeply into how many bot accounts were included in the platform’s customer base. That left the former security executive thinking “the company had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bots, in part because if the true number became public, it could harm the company’s value and image.

“Whistle-blower complaints can raise serious issues or just be a bunch of sour grapes,” Fisch said. “We just don’t know at this point how credible” the complaint is, she said.Bloomberg Intelligence litigation analyst Matthew Schettenhelm wrote in a note on Tuesday that the complaint “only marginally bolsters Musk’s case with Twitter”.

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 3. in ZA
 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

What a happy pay day. I received my payout today and I’m so happy to be a member of your company thank you Lauren_Flores_1

South Africa South Africa Latest News, South Africa South Africa Headlines