Musk Gets a Potential Boost With Twitter Whistle-Blower’s Claims
- Ex-security head alleges company didn’t deal with bots, risk
- Twitter says Zatko fired for performance; ‘false narrative’
Elon Musk
Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
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A whistle-blower’s complaint alleging Twitter Inc. ignored a rash of spam and bot accounts could help Elon Musk in his effort to walk away from a $44 billion buyout of the social-media platform, legal experts say.
Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s ex-head of security, alerted US authorities to “egregious deficiencies” in the company’s defenses against hackers, according to his complaint. Zatko, fired from Twitter earlier this year, said he raised concerns about the bots in early 2021 and was told by the head of site integrity that Twitter didn’t know how many bots were on the platform. His Twitter colleagues showed no interest in delving into the issue, according to the complaint.