Elon Musk says Twitter legal team told him he ‘violated an NDA’

Elon Musk had earlier said that his $44-billion cash deal to take Twitter private was "temporarily on hold"

Founder and CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk. File | Photo Credit: Reuters

Billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted that Twitter Inc's legal team accused him of violating a nondisclosure agreement by revealing that the sample size for the social media platform's checks on automated users was 100.

"Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!" tweeted Mr. Musk, chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc.

Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!

This actually happened.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022

Mr. Musk on Friday tweeted that his $44-billion cash deal to take the company private was "temporarily on hold" while he awaited data on the proportion of its fake accounts.

He said his team would test "a random sample of 100 followers" on Twitter to identify the bots. His response to a question prompted Twitter's accusation.

When a user asked Musk to "elaborate on process of filtering bot accounts," he replied, "I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate."

Any sensible random sampling process is fine. If many people independently get similar results for % of fake/spam/duplicate accounts, that will be telling.

I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022