Elon Musk’s attorneys have subpoenaed Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko in hopes of bolstering Musk’s protection in opposition to the lawsuit Twitter filed over their damaged merger deal.

The subpoena orders Zatko to supply a record of paperwork and to look for an oral deposition on September 9, about 5 weeks earlier than the Musk/Twitter trial is scheduled to start on the Delaware Court of Chancery. The subpoena was filed Thursday and made public immediately.

Zatko, a community safety skilled often known as “Mudge,” labored at Twitter from November 2020 till being fired in January 2022. His whistleblower criticism, which was made public final week, alleges that Zatko “uncovered excessive, egregious deficiencies by Twitter in each space of his mandate together with… consumer privateness, digital and bodily safety, and platform integrity/content material moderation.” It additionally claims that Twitter is responsible of “mendacity about bots to Elon Musk.”

Musk has defended his try to interrupt the merger settlement by questioning Twitter’s public disclosure that lower than 5 p.c of its monetizable every day energetic customers (mDAU) are spam or faux. Musk produced his personal spam estimate of 33 p.c through the use of a software referred to as the Botometer, however that estimate contains all “seen accounts” so it is not straight corresponding to mDAU.

The Botometer’s creator expressed shock that Musk used the software, noting that it enables you to “select any threshold you need and to get any consequence you need.” Twitter identified that the Botometer as soon as gave Musk’s Twitter account a ranking of 4 out 5, suggesting the software noticed Musk as extra bot-like than human-like. Twitter has additionally repeatedly stated its spam estimates are correct and that Musk has no proper to exit the merger settlement based mostly on the variety of spam accounts.

Whistleblower criticism may assist Twitter as a substitute

Though Zatko’s criticism accused Twitter of mendacity to Musk, TechDirt’s Mike Masnick outlined causes to doubt that conclusion in a prolonged put up titled, “Twitter Whistleblowing Report Actually Seems To Confirm Twitter’s Legal Argument, While Pretending To Support Musk’s.”

As Masnick notes, Twitter’s mDAU estimate “has by no means meant that lower than 5 p.c of all accounts, or all tweets, or all exercise is spam or bots. It simply signifies that lower than 5 p.c of what’s counted of their mDAU quantity is.” We’ve equally identified in varied Ars articles that Musk has argued in opposition to Twitter’s 5 p.c estimate by speaking concerning the proportion of spam throughout all Twitter accounts, though the mDAU determine solely contains accounts which can be logged in and might see adverts every day.

Yet Zatko’s argument that Musk is right hinges on counting spam bots that are not a part of the mDAU quantity. Here’s what Zatko’s criticism stated:

However there are various hundreds of thousands of energetic accounts that aren’t thought-about “mDAU,” both as a result of they’re spam bots, or as a result of Twitter doesn’t consider it could possibly monetize them. These hundreds of thousands of non-mDAU accounts are a part of the median consumer’s expertise on the platform. And for this huge set of non-mDAU energetic accounts, Musk is right: Twitter executives have little or no private incentive to precisely “detect” or measure the prevalence of spam bots.

Masnick pronounced himself “actually confused by this part, and the claims that ‘Musk is right.’ Because in court docket they are not arguing about how a lot spam is on the general platform. They’re arguing about how a lot is within the mDAU.” Yet the quoted paragraph from Zatko’s criticism “confirms precisely what Twitter has been saying in SEC filings and in court docket. What it reviews to the SEC is an estimate of what number of spam accounts slip by way of different processes, and are inadvertently counted within the mDAU,” Masnick wrote.

“The undeniable fact that Mudge is saying that there are spam accounts outdoors the mDAU… is the very level that Twitter has been making and that Musk retains misrepresenting,” Masnick continued. “mDAU doesn’t embrace all accounts on the platform. And the one method through which the spam counting may even be remotely related to the case (and, once more, it is not) is that if Twitter made a cloth misstatement to the SEC.”

Zatko’s wide-ranging criticism could possibly be problematic for Twitter in different methods. The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly reviewing the criticism, and the US Senate Judiciary Committee arrange a listening to with Zatko for September 13. Zatko has additionally reportedly mentioned the criticism with workers at a number of different Congressional committees.

Musk seeks mDAU paperwork and far more

Nonetheless, Musk is looking for a variety of paperwork and communications associated to mDAU from Zatko. The mDAU requests embrace however aren’t restricted to paperwork and messages about “Twitter’s use of mDAU as a ‘Key Metric,’ as famous in Twitter’s SEC filings”; paperwork “supporting, refuting, or in any other case regarding Twitter’s illustration” to the SEC that lower than 5 p.c of mDAU are spam; and paperwork about how the mDAU metric and spam numbers are calculated.

Musk desires paperwork and messages associated to “Twitter’s use of another consumer metric apart from mDAU, together with however not restricted to, every day energetic customers, month-to-month energetic customers, every day consumer engagement, month-to-month consumer engagement, or commercial engagements.” Another request targets paperwork “describing any course of or workflow” that Twitter makes use of to detect and label accounts as spam or false.

Musk additionally desires “Documents and Communications concerning overseas intelligence service brokers employed at Twitter.” That’s apparently in response to Zatko’s allegation that the “Indian authorities pressured Twitter to rent particular particular person(s) who had been authorities brokers.” Also, a federal jury just lately convicted a former Twitter worker of appearing as a overseas agent for Saudi Arabia.

Musk additional seeks paperwork “concerning safety vulnerabilities at Twitter,” paperwork associated to Zatko’s firing, paperwork “concerning reviews of the prevalence of bot or spam accounts on Twitter to [CEO] Parag Agrawal and/or different members of Twitter’s government workforce,” and far more.