Elon Musk Says Twitter Told Him He Broke His NDA

Elon Musk has said Twitter told him he broke a non-disclosure agreement by discussing the sample size behind the site's data on bots.

Twitter announced a deal to sell the social media site to Musk for $44 billion last month, but the takeover is 'temporarily on hold' after the site reportedly said less than 5 percent of users were bots or spam accounts.

Musk has made eliminating bots from the site a cornerstone of his prospective takeover bid, among other guarantees to safeguard free speech and suggestions that he could bring back certain banned accounts.

Now the Tesla CEO has confirmed on the social media site that he broke an NDA agreed with Twitter by saying their sample size for their data on bots is just 100 accounts.

He made the remark after saying he would conduct a sample of 100 random accounts on Twitter and when asked about the number revealed he chose it because that was the sample size the social media site used themselves.

It appears as though he has landed himself in hot water with that piece of information as he later tweeted: 'Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!'

He also said he hadn't seen any analysis to suggest that bots and spam accounts made up less than 5 percent of Twitter's user base.

According to Reuters, Musk later said there was a chance that 'over 90% of daily active users' on Twitter were bots or spam accounts that he would seek to remove when he completed his takeover.

Whether any of this will affect his ongoing takeover of Twitter is unknown as Musk has said he is 'still committed to the acquisition' despite the deal being placed on hold over the number of bots on the site.

The Tesla CEO has also taken another swipe at the social media platform he is hoping to acquire by telling his followers they are 'being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don't realize'.

He urged those following him to switch from 'Top Tweets', which shows users a selection of tweets from accounts they follow along with some from accounts they don't, based off interactions and potential interests determined by algorithms.

Users can switch instead to 'Latest Tweets', which returns their feed to a chronological feed of tweets from accounts they follow.

Per Insider, he later explained he was 'not suggesting malice in the algorithm' but that an algorithm choosing what content to show the user based on assumed likes could 'inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints'.