Elon Musk lawyer says Microsoft abused official API to access Twitter data

[Alfonso Maruccia]

A hot potato: Elon Musk's new reign at Twitter continues to bring chaos, uncertainty and weirdness to data-driven tech businesses. Now, the man that wants to go to Mars (while being unable to pay suppliers here on Earth) is threatening Microsoft for a seemingly excessive use of "precious" Twitter data in its apps.

Alex Spiro, who has been Elon Musk's personal lawyer for several years now, has sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on behalf of Twitter. The letter claims that the Redmond corporation abused its relationship with the crumbling social network, violating Twitter's development agreement "for an extended period of time."

First reported by the New York Times, the letter states that Microsoft has used Twitter's standard developer API "free of charge" for a bunch of its products and services, including Xbox One Social, Bing Pages, Azure, Global Ads, and others. Redmond took advantage of Twitter data to generate "tens of billions of dollars" in revenue, Spiro said, at least up until last month.

In April, Twitter's supreme, whimsical ruler Elon Musk asked Microsoft to start paying thousands of dollars to keep using the previously free API, which according to Spiro is a "discounted rate" for continued access to Twitter's social chattering. Microsoft declined the offer, choosing to retire Twitter access from its apps instead.

Microsoft is now in violation of Twitter's developer agreement, Spiro's letter said, as a "recent review" of the company's activity has seemingly highlighted abuse and misuse of such agreement for an extended period of time. Redmond exceeded the rate limits on use of the Twitter API, Spiro said, accessing the programming interface over 780 million times to retrieve over 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone.

Redmond also "appears" to have used Twitter data for unauthorized uses and purposes, the lawyer said, supplying public tweets to third-party entities (including government agencies). In April, Musk suggested that Microsoft had abused Twitter access to train large language models and generative algorithms such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, in which Microsoft invested tens of billions of dollars.

Alex Spiro is now asking Microsoft to provide details about how the company used Twitter's data and what third-party organizations had access to such data, with different reports for each app and no later than June 7, 2023. Meanwhile, Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said the company will review Twitter's questions while looking forward to continuing their long-term partnership with the social network. Starting to pay for Twitter's data, however, doesn't seem to be an option on the table.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98753-elon-musk-lawyer-microsoft-abused-official-api-access.html

 

[AlaskaGuy]

Slanted article by the NYT.

 

[RudyBob]

"Elon Musk's new reign at Twitter continues to bring chaos, uncertainty and weirdness to data-driven tech businesses" No it does not. Musk is none of those things. As Alaska Guy wrote pure slant

 

[wiyosaya]

The Musk is our savior crowd still thinks Musk is God. No surprises here. Musk's lawyers will say anything he tells them to even if its not true. And it looks like Musk is still "head CEO in charge of Twitter" after appointing a token puppet.

Sad how in this day and age, having money, or having the image of having money, apparently gives those in that category the right to say anything they want even if it is based soundly in falsehoods. What the world has come to from "I cannot tell a lie" to "I cannot tell the truth."

The court case from this will undoubtedly bring lots of popcorn moments.

 

[DSirius]

This article brings so valuable info to those who pay attention.
It is "funny" when 2 corporations go to fully "war competition" to each other. Because doing so they unveil so much about their true motives, core business and work culture.
For example, here I hope that more readers will understand and realize how valuable their personal data is for those companies. And the irony here is that all that profit for which Twitter and Microsoft is quarrel is not theirs from the start. In fact it is egregious. All that profit is in fact the money extracted from the users, by monetizing their personal info without their explicit consent, or through a shady Eula, which trick users to think that these Corporations offer their services for "free" which in reality is a lie. In fact they trade your personal data to their services, and those Eulas are very onerous and harmful for users and benefit the most only the corporations.
Will be interesting if they will go in court. Thus, users can see how much money Microsoft and Tweeter value info-data users, and how much they make from every user data. And the real value will be revealed by how much money Twitter is asking as penalties from Microsoft.
Citing: "Redmond took advantage of Twitter data to generate "tens of billions of dollars" in revenue, Spiro said, at least up until last month."
Tens of billions of dollars!!!
The time has come for everyone to make a better and fair contract EULA with all of these corporations.

P.S. Rhetorical question: 2 "professionals thieves" borrow the gems and money from thousand of people, and they quarrel how to split the jackpot.
And sometimes chat forum is debating whose side should we take?

This debate is more interesting:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1658960642445910017

P.S.2 We remember Apple-Epic percentage fee war too.

 

[axiomatic13]

Elon is a man-baby.

 

[RudyBob]

The Musk is our savior crowd still thinks Musk is God.

Musk is no savior he is more honest and someone that does think for himself which is a good thing. Musk is not God. God is God

 

[RudyBob]

Elon is a man-baby.

Did you just make that up? What's that mean anyhow? Is it merely something you once heard or read and thought to share?

 

[brucek]

Microsoft having given data to the government that under normal/public rules they are not supposed to has happened before, at least if you believe the Snowden leaks. But as far as I know, in the end Microsoft faced no legal penalties for having done so, because the NSA has the legal and political clout to make that data transfer happen, and I doubt the outcome will be any different if Twitter tries to make any noise about it.

If there were disclosures to other 3rd parties that Twitter would have had no way of knowing about until it somehow leaked back to them, they could have an interesting complaint here.

As to all the rest - I.e., usage of the API that was visible to and monitored by Twitter, obvious usage in high profile Microsoft apps, etc - I think Microsoft is going to be able to pull out some email, some conversation, some implied consent for this having been the desired relationship for many years and Twitter would have a tough time convincing a jury that Microsoft was violating its agreements.

 

[AlaskaGuy]

Elon is a man-baby.

Elon is a rock star.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1517707521343082496

 

[captaincranky]

Meanwhile, Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said the company will review Twitter's questions while looking forward to continuing their long-term partnership with the social network. Starting to pay for Twitter's data, however, doesn't seem to be an option on the table.

This is a desperation maneuver by Musk, in an attempt to extort money to keep Twitter afloat.

Nadella and Musk should invite the Zuckster into the party for a three way.

 

[sdms96825]

Elon is a man-baby.

You are half-right.

 

[axiomatic13]

Did you just make that up? What's that mean anyhow? Is it merely something you once heard or read and thought to share?

He's a full-grown man that acts like a baby. Has the temperament of a baby as well. Read as "none." No temperament. He cannot handle criticism. Man-baby.

 

[Kashim]

Everything Musk has done lately reeks of desperation. On one hand he needs constant attention from his loyal followers (Does that ring a bell? A certain orange-faced man-child acts the same way) and most of his businesses are in the toilet. Buying Twitter at the ridiculous price he paid actually cost him more than twice as much because he had to take on a huge amount of debt and also sell off a bunch of Tesla stock, which in turn crashed the price of Tesla and lowered Musk's overall wealth by a huge amount.

Not to mention the fact that Twitter is bleeding money like crazy as all the major advertisers leave the sinking ship. The only people still praising Musk are on the hard right, because he's apparently he's humanity's savior... somehow. Also, free speech is so important to Musk, unless it's going to cost him money, then it's not so important. What happened to free speech absolutism and not censoring anyone? As soon as Turkey threatened to ban Twitter, Musk immediately caved and started censoring posts. Keep it up Musk, it's great to watch the Titanic sink in slow motion.

 

[AlaskaGuy]

Everything Musk has done lately reeks of desperation. On one hand he needs constant attention from his loyal followers (Does that ring a bell? A certain orange-faced man-child acts the same way) and most of his businesses are in the toilet. Buying Twitter at the ridiculous price he paid actually cost him more than twice as much because he had to take on a huge amount of debt and also sell off a bunch of Tesla stock, which in turn crashed the price of Tesla and lowered Musk's overall wealth by a huge amount.

Not to mention the fact that Twitter is bleeding money like crazy as all the major advertisers leave the sinking ship. The only people still praising Musk are on the hard right, because he's apparently he's humanity's savior... somehow. Also, free speech is so important to Musk, unless it's going to cost him money, then it's not so important. What happened to free speech absolutism and not censoring anyone? As soon as Turkey threatened to ban Twitter, Musk immediately caved and started censoring posts. Keep it up Musk, it's great to watch the Titanic sink in slow motion.

Unlike pre Musk Twitter, Musk Twitter has banned several pedophilia groups from Twitter. Something that seems to anger the left very much.