Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a taxpayer-funded investigation into Twitter to determine whether or not the company is lying about the number of fake "bot" accounts on the social media platform.
After billionaire Tesla head Elon Musk raised a firestorm over the issue – Tesla is also now based in Austin, Tex. – Paxton decided it was prudent to get to the bottom of the "bots" issue, bots being a tool to "inflate followers and reach, and often push deceptive and annoying activity."
According to Fox News, bot accounts reduce real Twitter users' experience on the platform while artificially inflating the value of the company and the costs of doing business with it, "thus directly harming consumers and businesses – specifically, Texas consumers and businesses."
While Musk has stated somewhat off-the-cuff that he believes Twitter's bot percentage could be as high as 95 percent, Paxton is taking a more modest estimate at around 20 percent. Either way, the figure is much higher than the 5 percent claimed by Twitter itself.
Paxton's office issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID0) to investigate whether Twitter's 5 percent claim is "false, misleading, or deceptive" under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
"Per the demand," reports indicate, "Twitter would be compelled to turn over documents on how it calculates and manages user data and how that information relates to advertising."
"Texans rely on Twitter’s public statements that nearly all its users are real people," Paxton further stated. "It matters not only for regular Twitter users, but also Texas businesses and advertisers who use Twitter for their livelihoods."
"If Twitter is misrepresenting how many accounts are fake to drive up their revenue, I have a duty to protect Texans."
Twitter says it will continue to "cooperatively share information" with Musk to facilitate purchase transaction
In an emailed statement to Bloomberg, Twitter suggested that it still plans to do whatever it takes to complete the buyout transaction that Musk promised "in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement."
Twitter added that it "has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction" as planned.
Selling the company to Musk is in the best interest of all shareholders, Twitter added, confirming that it plans to "close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms."
Musk, meanwhile, said in an amended 13D filing that he believes Twitter has already breached the merger agreement by failing to provide accurate information about spam and fake accounts on its platform.
Musk stated further that he believes Twitter is "actively resisting and thwarting his information rights" by refusing to tell the truth about what it really knows concerning this issue.
Back in May, Musk tweeted that the deal was "temporarily on hold pending details supporting circulation that spam / fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," though he added that he is "still committed to acquisition," presumably at a lower price.
Twitter apparently plans to hold Musk to the original deal as it continues to insist that most Twitter users are, in fact, real – despite how ignorant and extremely left-wing most of them appear to be.
"Due diligence is a must for a merger or acquisition," wrote someone at Zero Hedge about the subject. "If fraud is discovered, then the agreement is off."
"In a normal world that would be true," responded another. "I'm not sure what the rules are in clown world, though."
Someone else added that he hopes Twitter goes bankrupt and the stock crashes to zero.
"Maybe that was Elon's plan all along," this person further wrote, followed by a wink.
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