Elon Musk and Twitter are locked in a fierce legal battle after Musk agreed to purchase the company, only to find out they may not be telling the full story.
According to the corporate-controlled media, Musk’s claims were nonsense, and he should be held “accountable” for backing out of a bad deal.
But now Elon Musk is laughing all the way to the bank after this whistleblower just blew the lid off Twitter’s lies.
The whistleblower’s bombshell
A famous “ethical hacker” and former head of Twitter’s cybersecurity just dropped the ultimate bombshell on the company’s head.
According to Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, who has been well-known and respected within tech circles for decades, filed an official complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission in which he accused Twitter of becoming a national security risk after years of mismanagement.
Twitter previously turned to Zatko to save it after a string of high-profile accounts were hacked, which led the Federal Communications Commission to weigh heavy regulations on Big Tech.
But Twitter ultimately cut a deal with the FCC that Zatko says the social media company totally reneged on.
“But in a filing with the federal government that was first obtained by The Washington Post and CNN, Zatko alleges that Twitter has failed to adhere to a deal with the Federal Trade Commission to plug the cybersecurity holes that led to the hacks,” the New York Post reported. “Zatko accused Twitter of failing to upgrade its server infrastructure, most of which he says is out of date — thus leaving it vulnerable to severe breaches.”
“He also said Twitter’s failure to safeguard the data of its 238 million users — among them government agencies, heads of state and defense officials — poses a national security risk,” the report continued.
And after he ripped Twitter and their hapless “leadership” team to shreds for turning the platform into a national security risk, he also slipped in one last little bit of big news.
Twitter’s chickens are coming home to roost
As just an added little nugget that Zatko dropped from the clouds, without ever mentioning Elon Musk by name, Zatko basically went on the record to say Twitter is lying to Musk.
Musk had originally agreed to a $44 billion deal to take the company private, as he said he was concerned about the platforms’ direction and freedom of speech.
The richest man in the world has previously said that Twitter’s decision – as well as that of all Big Tech companies – to permanently ban former President Donald Trump was “foolish in the extreme” and a “mistake” because it “alienated a large part of the country.”
But Musk attempted to back out of the deal after he came to the conclusion that Twitter wasn’t being forthright with him about the number of fake and spam accounts on the site, the ultimate metric for assessing the company’s value, as Twitter’s income is solely based on advertising dollars that will quickly vanish if companies can’t trust that real humans are seeing their ads.
According to Zatko, Twitter is actually financially incentivizing the company’s leadership to artificially inflate user numbers instead of cracking down on bots and spam accounts, to the tune of upwards of $10 million in bonuses for the company’s executives alone.
“Twitter executives have little or no personal incentive to accurately ‘detect’ or measure the prevalence of spam bots,” Zatko’s complaint read. “Senior management had no appetite to properly measure the prevalence of bot accounts . . . they were concerned that if accurate measurements ever became public, it would harm the image and valuation of the company.”
Needless to say, Twitter has responded by outright denying everything and attempting to smear Zatko – who again, has been one of the most respected cybersecurity experts in the nation for decades, hence Twitter hiring him in the first place – as incompetent and vengeful for his firing.
But this doesn’t appear to be something they’re going to be able to walk away from.
Tech experts told the New York Post that “Zatko’s claims will likely prompt more intense regulatory scrutiny of Twitter.”
On top of that, this news essentially came at the worst possible time for Twitter’s legal battle with Elon Musk, as the bombshell dropped just one day after Musk’s legal team issued a subpoena to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
Musk and Dorsey have been longtime friends, and reports have indicated that it was Dorsey who egged on Musk behind the scenes to take Twitter private and help save the company Dorsey originally built.
Just a few months ago, Dorsey also took to Twitter to make clear publicly that, in hindsight, he does agree with Musk’s opposition to the Trump ban, saying that “generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work,” despite the ban being implemented on his watch.
Needless to say, if Dorsey were to happen to give any credence to the claims made by Zatko, it could be game over for Twitter in more ways than one.
Musk’s attempt to pull out of the deal has been described by many within Musk’s inner circle – including bankers with knowledge of the financing of Musk’s takeover who spoke to the New York Post – as merely an attempt to lower the $44 billion price tag, not get out of the deal entirely.
If that’s the case, Zatko’s claims, not to mention what Dorsey may hand his friend Elon to help make the deal Dorsey pushed for happen, could certainly be enough to make that happen.
Whether or not that ultimately happens is anyone’s guess at this point.
But many will certainly find plenty of solace in knowing that – for right now, at least – Twitter appears to be a total dumpster fire.
Even more so than usual.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
