Twitter v. Musk: Did Twitter destroy key evidence?

As if we hadn’t all suspected it already, the story about Twitter and Elon Musk is going into the next round. Now, the Tesla boss has once again made serious accusations against the short message service. The latter is said to have summarily destroyed evidence that would have confirmed Musk’s thesis about too many fake accounts. Does someone want to push the price down again?

Twitter security chief talks about destruction of evidence

Whenever the love-hate relationship between Elon Musk and Twitter enters a new round, I get the song “The NeverEnding Story” from the 80s stuck in my head. After all, the tiff between the tech mogul and the short messaging service is nothing less than that. The chapter seemed to be over a few days ago. After all, Musk announced at the beginning of October that he would buy Twitter after all. Experts speculated that he wanted to escape the high legal costs that would have been involved in a court battle. But it is also possible that the Tesla boss simply had an ace up his sleeve that no one knew about.

Now the US news portal Bloomberg has reported that the former head of security at Twitter is making serious accusations against the head of the short news service. The latter is said to have ordered him to make important data and records disappear. The destroyed documents are said to include handwritten notes that the former head of security made during meetings with important company representatives. The perfidious part of the whole story is that the severance package after the head of security was terminated was tied to the destruction of the documents.

Not an unknown employee

Twitter’s former security chief, by the way, is not an unknown entity. After all, he is known in the scene under the name “Mudge” as a successful hacker. The social network brought the IT security expert on board in 2020 to take action against people who were specifically hacking celebrities’ Twitter accounts. Now it appears that this personnel decision was probably not the smartest one. After all, Mudge didn’t leave a good mark on Twitter. In addition to chaotic working conditions, it was probably above all the inadequate protection against cyberattacks that the hacker criticized.

In addition, Mudge underlined Elon Musk’s accusation that Twitter has far more fake accounts with bot control than they admit in the executive suite. Whether the news will really change anything else about Musk’s purchase intentions is more than questionable. After all, the relevant court in Delaware has ordered that the purchase should be completed by October 28 of this year. But perhaps Musk will be able to squeeze a little compensation out of Twitter this way.