Musk's lawyers warned Twitter on Monday that he might walk
away from the acquisition if the company fails to provide the data he seeks on
spam and fake accounts.
Twitter has said it is continuing to share information with
Musk. Part of that data is the "firehose," a set comprising all
tweets on the platform analyzed by different parameters, such as devices of
users or profiles of accounts that publish tweets, according to people familiar
with the matter.
T witter sells this data to social media monitoring
companies as part of its licensing business but plans to furnish it to Musk for
free as part of the information exchange, the sources said. The firehose does
not contain confidential information, such personal details of Twitter users
that are not public or how often they verify their accounts, the sources added.
Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal last month tweeted he
did not believe a calculation of fake and spam accounts could be performed
outside the company, because it would require private information that Twitter
cannot share.
It was not clear how much confidential information about its
user base Twitter will share with Musk. The Washington Post first reported on
the sharing of the firehose.
A Musk spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request
for comment.
Twitter's top lawyer Vijaya Gadde told an employee meeting
that the company anticipates it could hold a shareholder vote on the Musk deal
in late July or early August.
During the internal meeting, the company's top executives
said Twitter was working to improve its defenses against fake accounts and
accounts that spread cryptocurrency spam.