Twitter is giving Elon Musk what he wants. The company will hand over access to its internal firehose of data so Musk can figure out once and for all what the deal is with bots on the platform. The question is: What will he do now?
According to The Washington Post, Musk could get access to the company's firehose, or a massive stream of data with more than 500 million tweets, as soon as this week. The move may finally end the impasse between Musk and Twitter, a person familiar told The Post. The firehose is a real-time record of tweets that are sent, the devices they're sent from and information about the accounts sending them.
Musk's legal team has claimed that he needs access to this data in order to accurately see how many users on the platform are bots or spam accounts. Musk previously said the deal is "on hold" until he gained access to this information, and threatened to pull out of the deal on Monday if Twitter didn't cough up information about its bot situation in the following weeks. Some have speculated that Musk doesn't actually want to buy Twitter anymore, and that the bot issue gives him cover to back out.
As it stands, Musk doesn't have a way out of the deal unless it's held up by regulatory processes or he simply doesn't have the money to pay. Though Musk has demanded to see this data to come up with his own conclusion about Twitter's bot situation, he also waived his right to dive into Twitter’s finances and internal workings when he signed the purchase agreement in April, according to the Post. He may have to pay $1 billion to walk away from the deal if gaining access to the firehose doesn't solve his issues with the platform.
But this is Elon Musk we're talking about. Anything could happen.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE