Elon Musk’s effort to purchase Twitter, assuming he still actually wants to do it, ran into a serious snag in the past couple of weeks. Musk insisted that Twitter turn over all of it’s user data to him so he could verify how many “real” users they have and how many accounts are spam bots. A failure to do so would, according to Musk and his attorneys, constitute a breach of the merger agreement they had previously reached. That obstacle seems to have been removed now because the company’s board of directors has agreed to provide the billionaire with “the full firehose” of user data he requested. That could happen “as soon as this week.” So is this now officially a done deal? (Ars Technica)

Twitter now plans to comply with Elon Musk’s demand for user data that he says is needed to determine whether the company’s spam estimates are accurate, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

“After a weeks-long impasse, Twitter’s board plans to comply with Elon Musk’s demands for internal data by offering access to its full ‘firehose,’ the massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted each day, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the state of negotiations,” the Post wrote.

Twitter declined comment on the Post report when contacted by Ars today but pointed to its statement from Monday that “Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.”

We’re seeing a lot of speculation as to what’s really going on behind the scenes in these negotiations. One possibility is that everything is pretty much as it seems. It’s not unreasonable for Musk to want to know how many actual users Twitter has as opposed to empty spam bots. Those figures will affect the company’s ability to generate advertising revenue if and when he takes it over. Twitter’s reluctance to initially give it up is equally understandable because who knows what secrets might lie inside of that “firehose” of data and what Musk might reveal to the public?

But another school of thought holds that Elon Musk may be having serious misgivings about this venture. He’s going to be giving up a very significant portion of his personal wealth in exchange for a company that has yet to consistently produce a significant profit. If he can show that the company has violated the merger agreement, that would get him off the hook. But if that’s the case, Twitter seems to have just called his bluff.

A third possibility is that Elon Musk never actually intended to buy Twitter. He’s well known for loving to stir the pot and troll people. Is it possible that he was simply trying to shake things up to draw attention to Twitter’s abusive content suppression policies, but now the “joke” has gotten out of control? I find that the least likely option. If Musk was that bad of a businessman he wouldn’t have amassed the fortune that he currently has. But it’s still possible that he sees Twitter as more of a “hobby” on the side than an actual profit-making venture.

I will be interested to see what sort of secrets Musk finds in all of that user data and whether or not he decides to share any of it with the public. I would be very keen to hear about some of the “listening” accounts that follow people who tweet about particular topics but never tweet themselves. Call me conspiratorially-minded if you like, but I would be very shocked indeed if some of those accounts don’t trace back to the United States government’s military and intelligence agencies.