Elon Musk says Twitter’s legal team told him he violated a non-disclosure agreement

Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the opening ceremony of the Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory in Shanghai, China, January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Ali Song

May 14 (Reuters) – Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday (TWTR.N) The legal team accused him of violating a nondisclosure agreement by revealing that the sample size for the social media platform’s checks on automated users was 100.

“Twitter legal has been summoned to complain that I violated their non-disclosure agreement by revealing that the bot scan sample size is 100!” Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla, tweeted (TSLA.O).

Musk tweeted Friday that his $44 billion cash deal to make the company private is “temporarily on hold” while he awaits data on the percentage of its fake accounts. Read more

He said his team will test a “random sample of 100 followers” on Twitter to identify the bots. His response to an accusation question sparked Twitter.

When a user asked Musk to “clarify the bot filter process,” he replied, “I chose 100 as the number for the sample size, because that’s what Twitter uses for a <5% fake/spam/duplicate account."

musk chirp During the early hours of Sunday morning, he had yet to see “any” analysis showing that the social media company had fake accounts below 5%.

He later said that “there is a possibility that it is more than 90% of daily active users.”

Additional reporting by Javier Singh Shekhat and Rachna Dhanrajani in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Richard Chang and David Evans

Our criteria: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.