Elon Musk’s endless attempt to take over Twitter has taken another bizarre turn as the social media platform appears to have agreed to the entrepreneur’s pleas for ‘fire hoses’ held by the company “Access to internal data.
For weeks, Musk has urged Twitter to provide data that would allow the South African entrepreneur to test whether the majority of the platform’s users are fake bot accounts — which he believes would lower the price he’s willing to pay for the company.Musk believes that bot accounts make up more than 5% of Twitter’s user base — even Musk’s critics believe this to be true — and wants the company to counter that.
Twitter, which reports a smaller number of inauthentic accounts in its financial results, is willing to give Musk access to every tweet posted every day, along with detailed user information, so he can look for inauthentic behavior, according to The Washington Post.(Informally, the data is referred to as the “fire hose.” Twitter declined Wired’s request to confirm or deny the Washington Post’s report.) Twitter is apparently willing to grant Musk access to the data stream It comes days after the suitor’s lawyer sent a letter to the company that said it “actively resisted and thwarted [Musk's] right to information” and threatened to back out of the deal.
The switch to allowing Musk to access the data is reportedly significant, and it raises two key questions: First, will Musk get what he wants from the data he gets?Second: What does his gaining access mean for the privacy and security of everyday users?
For Queensland University of Technology professor Axel Bruns, the move was what Twitter called Musk’s bluff.”By having him use a fire hose, Twitter can presumably say, ‘Then prove your claim about a lot of robots,’” he said.Bruns believes that Musk and anyone he hires will have trouble tracking the robot.But even for someone with the necessary skills to work with that level of data, it’s unlikely to be the right way to answer this question.Whether a firehose of 500 million tweets a day on the social media platform will actually help Musk answer the key question he claims is holding him back from buying Twitter: the percentage of bot users, is uncertain.”It seems a bit performative,” says Paddy Leerssen, an information law researcher at the University of Amsterdam.”My sense is that this data is not the data you need to determine who is a bot.”
Being able to pinpoint what makes a bot a bot has been a hotly debated topic in academia, and experts devote most of their work hours to the topic — which is why they’re skeptical about accessing all the tweets posted to Twitter The reason would clearly answer the robot question, enough to convince Musk to keep buying.”My impression is that people tend to overestimate how easy it is to detect robots,” Leerssen said.”A tool like this [fire hose] won’t let you do that unless you combine it with various other research methods. I don’t think on a timeline like this, Elon Musk would have time to go Do.” The person who could answer how the data would help him identify the robot, Musk himself, did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Giving Musk access to tweeted fire hoses was a relatively innocuous move, said Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel, a service that tracks inauthentic behavior on Twitter.”It doesn’t expose users’ private data,” he said.”It’s just one tweet.” From that stream, Musk can analyze the data to see if accounts are sending the same message, or if a handful of accounts are responsible for the majority of tweets on the platform — both of which could be Potential warning signs of robot behavior.Asked if we should be concerned about Musk’s access to fire hose data, Buzzi said no.”It’s just a ton of tweets,” he said.For almost everyone outside of Twitter, the number of tweets is also unmanageable: Bruns points out that the U.S. Library of Congress once had fire hose access, tried to archive every tweet ever posted and abandoned the effort .
Musk’s interest in firehose data is ironic as he reportedly declined to look at the Twitter data room offer — a collection of information and documents the company puts together as it pitches its business to potential buyers — back in April when his initial takeover bid was launched.Twitter spokeswoman Jasmine Basi declined to answer questions, including whether Musk had previously requested access to the data room.Basi also declined to answer direct questions about how many people outside Twitter (besides Musk) have access to the firehose data, and whether Musk must sign a nondisclosure or usage agreement to access the data.This is a little worrying.”While I understand what Twitter is doing here, it’s still very unusual,” said Bruns, who equates it with “giving a crown jewel.”
However, the crown jewel is on sale: About two dozen companies already have access to the data firehose that Twitter gave Musk access to.Twitter’s Basi declined to name the companies, but so far, their handling of the data doesn’t appear to have caused any known issues at the dozen or so.Previously, Twitter offered broader access to fire hoses, but there were problems: The company recognized that it was leaving money on the table by giving access to third-party data resellers that the spy agency had previously acquired through acquisitions Fire company Dataminr gained access to user data hose access.Researchers at Google and MIT previously had access to the same data that Musk is now granted access to.”The sharing of sensitive information is a critical part of the collection process,” said Leerssen, who worked on data protection issues around the data room for due diligence before working in academia.”When you go through the process of acquiring a company, you need to have a deep understanding,” he said.
The biggest unknown, however, is Musk himself — who, in his attempted acquisition, has shown he is willing to ignore legal agreements.Many also see his apparent concern about the number of bot accounts as an excuse to back out of the deal, even though the terms of his agreement with Twitter prohibit that from happening without hefty punitive fines.
“Basically, this is more of a psychoanalysis of Elon Musk than Twitter data,” said Midas Nouwens, assistant professor of digital rights at Aarhus University. Nouwens has long been concerned that Twitter employees could Scale of Information Obtained – This is a single tech company located in a single jurisdiction in the world.“I found it difficult to separate the way social media platforms like Twitter operate from the rogue elements of Elon Musk,” he said. “It quickly became trying to figure out what Elon Musk would do, and his Behaviour can be very erratic at times.”
Nouwens was among those accessing Twitter data through an API available to the researchers, which allowed him to query 10 million tweets per month.He said accessing the data stream was easier than expected given the amount of data he had access to.He must write down a description of the projects he intends to use the data for, while providing evidence that he is an active scholar.”Whether it’s Elon Musk or any other actor, I’m always worried,” Nuvens said.”For him now, the added factor is his past behavior and, of course, his business interests.” The worry is that even if Musk does back out of a deal to buy Twitter, he or his company may in the future Will use the information he or his company gets by viewing Twitter’s tweets for free fire hoses.The fire hose dataset can yield new insights into who uses Twitter, why, how long-term usage patterns are changing, and problematic behaviors of user engagement — while generating details of user interests and networks, Bruns said.”Unless I leave out anything in my coverage about how long Musk can use the fire hose, I’m assuming Twitter is betting on him that his team quickly gives up,” Bruns said. “Especially If he has a fire hose for a few months or more, it does become a privacy and ethical issue for the user as well.”
Whether or not Musk has access to the data, it’s unlikely to help him overcome the major hurdle he faced in buying Twitter.”I don’t know if the questions he put to Twitter have answers,” Nouwens said.”Maybe Twitter knows more than outside researchers currently or are able to. But it’s a very tough question.”