Elon Musk countersues Twitter

Posted on July 30, 2022

After being sued by Twitter, Elon Musk responded with his own countersuit in his legal fight against the social media network.

Twitter decided to sue Elon Musk and both will go to court in October to resolve the $44 billion deal. Earlier this year, Twitter accepted the Tesla CEO’s offer to buy the platform.

Although Elon Musk had promised not to back out of the deal, this was well before he realized that something was up with Twitter’s claims that its spam and fake accounts represent fewer than 5% of its users.

He placed the acquisition on hold and then later made it clear that he would back out of the deal if Twitter wouldn’t accurately portray the number of spam, fake, and bot accounts using its platform.

Twitter sued Elon Musk, and now Elon Musk is countersuing Twitter.

Reuters reported that Elon Musk countersued Twitter on Friday adding that the 164-page document was not publicly available.

The lawsuit was filed a few hours after Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery ordered an October 17th trial.

Luigi Crispo, a Twitter shareholder with 5,500 shares in the company, also sued Elon Musk on Friday. Crispo wants the court to order Elon Musk to close the Twitter deal and to find that he breached his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders.

He also wants the court to award damages for losses. According to Reuters, Elon Musk owes a fiduciary duty to Twitter’s shareholders due to his 9.6% stake in Twitter. And also because the takeover agreement enables ElonMusk to veto many of Twitter’s decisions.

The Silver lining

Although there really isn’t much of a silver lining for Twitter or Elon. Lawsuits are not an ideal source of joy for many parties involved in them–at least, I wouldn’t think they are.

However, I feel as if the lawsuit is bringing some of the issues many people on Twitter are dealing with to the forefront. Such as shadow banning.

This happened to a few people (including Teslarati!) on Twitter. In many cases, a user will tweet but that tweet will not show up in searches.

And if they reply to a tweet or like that tweet, Twitter hides it. In my tweet below, I shared a thread filled with screenshots and video evidence of this happening to Teslarati.

🤔

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2022

Twitter has four types of bans:

Search suggestion ban.
Search ban.
Ghost ban.
Reply deboosting.

Fortunately, the ban on Teslarati is lifted, although for a while there, there was a back and forth for a couple of days after Elon had replied to my tweet.

It shouldn’t have to take a response from Elon Musk for Twitter to remove bans on real accounts. That’s not fair to Elon Musk or the users who are being silenced by Twitter.

I’ve also noticed that there have been fewer bots since the lawsuit has begun. However, I’ve noticed that there have been fewer engagements and I am not the only one noticing this.

Whether or not these are directly or indirectly caused by the ongoing legal saga, no one knows. But we are noticing.

Yes 100%- also noticing less spam bots impersonating you.

— Zack (@BLKMDL3) July 30, 2022

One thing we can count on is for this lawsuit to reveal a lot.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, or concerns, see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1

Elon Musk countersues Twitter