After being sued by Twitter, Elon Musk responded with his own counterclaim in his legal battle against the social media network.
Twitter decided to sue Elon Musk and the two will go to court in October to settle the $44 billion settlement. Earlier this year, Twitter accepted Tesla’s CEO’s offer to buy the platform.
Although Elon Musk had promised not to back out of the deal, that was long before he realized something was wrong with Twitter’s claims that its spam and fake accounts make up less than 5% of its users.
It put the acquisition on hold, then made clear it would back out of the deal if Twitter didn’t accurately show the number of spam, fake and bot accounts using its platform.
Twitter sued Elon Musk, and now Elon Musk is suing Twitter.
Elon Musk counterclaims on Twitter
Reuters reported that Elon Musk countersued on Twitter on Friday, adding that the 164-page document was not publicly available.
The lawsuit was filed hours after Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ordered an Oct. 17 trial.
Luigi Crispo, a Twitter shareholder with 5,500 shares of the company, also sued Elon Musk on Friday. Crispo wants the court to order Elon Musk to close the Twitter deal and to find that he breached his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders.
He also wants the court to award damages. According to Reuters, Elon Musk owes a fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders because of his 9.6% stake in Twitter. And also because the acquisition agreement allows ElonMusk to veto many of Twitter’s decisions.
The silver lining
Although there really isn’t much buzz for Twitter or Elon. Lawsuits are not an ideal source of joy for many parties involved in them, at least I don’t think they are.
However, I think the lawsuit is bringing to the fore some of the issues that many people on Twitter are dealing with. Like the shadow ban.
This happened to a few people (including Teslarati!) on Twitter. In many cases, a user will tweet, but that tweet will not appear in searches.
And if they reply or like a tweet, Twitter hides it. In my tweet below, I shared a thread full of screenshots and video evidence of this happening to Teslarati.
🤔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2022
Twitter has four types of bans:
- Prohibition of search suggestions.
- Prohibition of search.
- Prohibition of ghosts.
- Reactivation of the response.
Fortunately, Teslarati’s ban is being lifted, although there was a back and forth for a while for a couple of days after Elon had responded to my tweet.
It shouldn’t take an Elon Musk response for Twitter to remove bans from real accounts. This is not fair to Elon Musk or the users who are being muted by Twitter.
I’ve also noticed that there have been fewer bots since the demand started. However, I have noticed that there have been fewer engagements and I am not the only one who notices it.
Whether or not these are directly or indirectly caused by the ongoing legal saga, no one knows. But we are noticing.
Yes, 100%, you also see less spam bots impersonating you.
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) July 30, 2022
One thing we can count on is that this lawsuit will reveal a lot.
I would love to hear from you! If you have comments or concerns, see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1
Elon Musk counterclaims on Twitter