Elon Musk says Twitter legal team told him he violated an NDA

Says his team would test 'a random sample of 100 followers' on Twitter to identify the bots

Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted that Twitter Inc's (TWTR.N) legal team accused him of violating a nondisclosure agreement by revealing that the sample size for the social media platform's checks on automated users was 100.

"Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!" tweeted Musk, chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O).

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

Musk on Friday tweeted that his $44-billion cash deal to take the company private was "temporarily on hold" while he awaited data on the proportion of its fake accounts.

Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!

This actually happened.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022

Read more: Explainer: What are these spam bots that Musk has vowed to defeat or die trying?

He said his team would test "a random sample of 100 followers" on Twitter to identify the bots. His response to a question prompted Twitter's accusation.

Any sensible random sampling process is fine. If many people independently get similar results for % of fake/spam/duplicate accounts, that will be telling.

I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022

When a user asked Musk to "elaborate on process of filtering bot accounts," he replied: "I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate."

Also read: Musk says $44 billion Twitter deal on hold over fake account data

Musk tweeted during the early hours of Sunday that he is yet to see "any" analysis that shows that the social media company has fake accounts less than 5%.

He later said that "There is some chance it might be over 90% of daily active users."