After being sued by Twitter, Elon Musk has responded with a counterclaim of his own 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 resolve the $44 billion deal. Earlier this year, Twitter accepted a Tesla executive’s offer to buy the platform.
Although Elon Musk had promised not to back out of the deal, that was long before he knew something was wrong with Twitter’s claims that its spam and fake accounts represented less than 5% of users.
He delayed the acquisition and later made it clear he would walk away from the deal if Twitter didn’t accurately depict the number of spam, fake and bot accounts using its platform.
Twitter is suing Elon Musk, and now Elon Musk is suing Twitter.
Elon Musk drops lawsuit against Twitter
Reuters reported that Elon Musk filed a counterclaim against Twitter on Friday, adding that the 164-page document was not publicly available.
The lawsuit was filed hours after Chancellor Kathleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered an Oct. 17 trial.
Luigi Crispo, a Twitter shareholder with 5,500 shares in the company, also sued Elon Musk on Friday. Crispo wants the court to order Elon Musk to end the deal with Twitter and find that he breached his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders.
He also wants the court to award damages for losses. 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 of a silver lining for Twitter or Elon. Lawsuits are not ideal sources of joy for many parties involved in them – at least I don’t think they are.
However, I feel like the lawsuit brings to the fore some of the issues that many people on Twitter are dealing with. Like a shadow ban.
This happened to several people (including Teslarati!) on Twitter. In many cases, the user will tweet, but that tweet will not show up in searches.
And if they reply to a tweet or like that tweet, Twitter hides it. In my tweet below, I shared a thread full of screenshots and video evidence of what’s going on with Teslarati.
🤔
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2022
Twitter has four types of bans:
- Ban on search suggestions.
- No search.
- No ghosts.
- Decrease response.
Thankfully, the Teslarati ban has been lifted, although there was a few days of back and forth for a while after Elon responded to my tweet.
I shouldn’t have to accept an answer from Elon Musk for Twitter to remove bans on real accounts. This is not fair to Elon Musk or the users who have been silenced by Twitter.
I also noticed that there are less bots since the case started. However, I have noticed that there are fewer engagements and I am not the only one who notices this.
No one knows whether they are directly or indirectly caused by the ongoing legal saga. But we notice.
Yes, 100% – we also notice fewer spam bots impersonating you.
— Zach (@BLKMDL3) July 30, 2022
One thing we can count on is that this process will reveal a lot.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments or concerns, see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1
Elon Musk drops lawsuit against Twitter
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