Twitter can’t give Musk the data he needs to determine fake accounts. It’s obvious that while Twitter does some work to detect fake accounts, they probably only go after low hanging fruit. Twitter is balancing investment costs vs impact to the platform and obviously they are coming in light. Everyone that uses Twitter knows it has a bot problem.

If Musk’s team does a deeper dive than Twitter is willing to invest in and determines that the number of bots is material, it calls into question the entire financial model of Twitter. Customers will demand refunds and earnings will have to be restated going back years. It’s going to be a nuclear financial bomb.

So of course Twitter is going to sandbag. They can’t afford to release that data because they know it’s going to be material. Musk knows this and Twitter knows this.

I think Twitter is actually fucked now because their number of accounts will come into question and maybe even the SEC might squeeze them. But Twitter will probably look tough but try to close this chapter as quickly as possible and hope that no one digs deeper into the fake accounts.