Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who is attempting to walk away from his deal to acquire Twitter, is seeking documents from ad technology firms to uncover more information about bots and spam accounts on Twitter. Thursday. Twitter sues Tesla’s chief executive, accusing Twitter of hiding information about how it calculates the percentage of bots on the service, away from a $44 billion (about Rs 3,50,900 crore) settlement to try to go. A trial is scheduled for October 17.
Musk’s attorneys have summoned both Integral Ed Science (IAS) and DoubleVerify to review accounts or any documents or communications on their participation in any audits of Twitter’s user base.
IAS and DoubleVerify, both of which are based in New York, use technology to independently verify that digital ads are viewed by real people. Advertisers use the Services to ensure that the ads they pay for are seen by potential customers and not by automated bots.
Twitter, IAS and DoubleVerify did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to a tweet from a user who questioned how Twitter audits its service and also linked to a Reuters story targeting advertising firms on Musk, Musk tweeted: “These are questions that need to be addressed. Twitter is doing everything possible to avoid replying…”
In a countersuit earlier this month, Musk claimed that Twitter’s monetizable daily active users are 65 million fewer than the company’s. Twitter has said that it stands by its disclosure.
The metric measures users who log into Twitter through a website or app that are able to serve ads or use paid products such as subscriptions, according to a Twitter filing.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
