Elon Musk searches documents at ad tech firms for information on Twitter bots .
Elon Musk will remember this 2022 as one of the most tense for his wallet: getting rid of his hasty decision in the acquisition of Twitter for 44 billion dollars.
This legal battle between the social network and the CEO of SpaceX continues to extend its reach, and now it’s the ad tech firms that could give Musk the weapons to dissolve the deal without harm.
According to Reuters , documents presented in the Delaware court show the consultations that Musk ‘s legal team has made with firms specialized in digital advertising, and that they would have valuable information about the bot and spam accounts on the platform.
Documents filed with the court appointed to hear the case cite Integral Ad Service and DoubleVerify as companies that use technology to verify whether advertising is seen by real users and distinguish bots from that registry.
Twitter Can’t Against Elon Musk’s Argument
In recent weeks, the merger agreement between Twitter and two Elon Musk companies came to a standstill due to a lack of transparency regarding the number of bot or spam accounts within the social network.
On the one hand, Twitter points out that one in 20 accounts on the network could be a bot or a spam account; while Elon Musk points out that, at least, they are one in 5 “non-human” accounts.
Twitter allowed Musk ‘s legal team access to the platform’s raw data, but the businessman insists that the percentage of bot accounts is 20% of the total profiles registered in the system.
Why digital advertising agencies?
Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify are companies based in New York that are required by advertisers to ensure that the advertising contracted in digital environments reaches user accounts or potential clients, and that the total number of views is not affected by automated accounts
The only relevant document I found is a blog post on the Twitter site (https://t.co/YWJfjFxqfo)
So basically, some companies do audits for Twitter to verify ads on the platform, but…where are these audits? How work these audits? pic.twitter.com/avLamyuTV9
— Andrea Stroppa (@Andst7) August 18, 2022
The only relevant document I found is a blog post on the Twitter site (https://t.co/YWJfjFxqfo)
So basically, some companies do audits for Twitter to verify ads on the platform, but…where are these audits? How work these audits? pic.twitter.com/avLamyuTV9
— Andrea Stroppa (@Andst7) August 18, 2022
In a tweet, Musk highlighted the need to include companies that use these mechanisms for filtering results in the investigation, given that Twitter allows external auditing of apps. In response to a conversation, Musk noted that “those are the questions that Twitter is avoiding answering by any means possible.”