The protracted legal dispute between Twitter and the world’s richest man Elon Musk over a $44 billion agreement has taken a new turn. Musk claimed on Friday that Twitter’s decision to pay millions of dollars to a whistleblower is yet another good reason for him to back out of the deal to purchase the popular microblogging service.
Musk responded to the Wall Street Journal’s claim that Twitter recently chose to settle a disagreement with him by paying a whistleblower $7 million. Musk challenges Twitter’s choice. Following the publication of the news, Twitter received a letter from Musk’s attorney claiming that Twitter had violated the merger agreement by paying Peter Jatko and his attorneys $7.75 million without first getting his permission.
Twitter’s chief security officer has been Peter Jatko. He was sacked earlier this year because the social media giant had misrepresented its strong security plan and misled regulators about its lax cybersecurity standards. Then, he went on Twitter to claim that the corporation disregarded all of his attempts to stop the propagation of phoney accounts and false information.
Earlier, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk claimed that Twitter is ruled by spam, bots, and bogus accounts, which is why he had to cancel this agreement. Musk tweeted on Tuesday at the same time that more than 90% of the comments on his tweets are automated and spam.
Twitter, on the other hand, denied the assertion made by musk’s attorney that he had given money to Jatko, the organization’s former security guard. In actuality, the Wall Street Journal published a piece on this transaction on Thursday. The compensation-related sum that was handed to Jatko after he quit Twitter, per the report, was stipulated in a contract. The agreement forbade Jatko from making public statements. She did, however, criticise Twitter as a government whistleblower.
Peter Jacko, a former security officer for Twitter and a whistleblower, claims the corporation misled US regulators about its defences against hackers and phoney accounts. In the 84-page complaint, Peter claimed that Twitter’s assurance of robust security measures for users was untrue. The US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice received a complaint from Jatco last month alleging that Twitter had underreported the number of automated bots and that the company would rather have more users than deal with phoney accounts and bots. Twitter employees take unnecessary security risks to increase user numbers while collecting millions of dollars in bonuses.