Twitter Paid Whistleblower $7 Million Settlement in June to Keep Him Quiet

Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images/BBN Edit)
Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images, BNN Edit

Twitter reportedly agreed in June to pay roughly $7 million to the whistleblower whose recent explosive allegations will be part of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s case against the social media company in the upcoming trial over Musk’s withdrawn deal to buy the leftist social media company.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in June, Twitter agreed to pay roughly $7 million to the whistleblower who recently came forward with explosive allegations against the company’s lack of security and threats to user privacy which are set to be part of Elon Musk’s case against the company.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal

Breitbart News previously reported on the key allegations of Zatko’s complaint, including serious claims about bots:

Zatko alleges that Twitter has been “lying” about the number of bots on its platform, particularly to Elon Musk who terminated his $44 billion acquisition of the platform. Musk has long claimed that while Twitter alleges that bots account for approximately five percent of its platform, the number is closer to 20 percent.

Zatko alleges that Twitter arrives at its official percentage of bots by only sampling from a subset of accounts known as “monetizable daily active users,” or mDAUs. But that this metric, which was created to give advertisers an idea of how many real humans are looking at their ads, already is designed to exclude bots.

Zatko said that his own attempts to determine the number of bots on the platform were met with a lack of enthusiasm. Zatko states in his disclosure: “In early 2021, as a new executive, Mudge asked the head of Site Integrity (responsible for addressing platform manipulation including spam and botnets) what the underlying spam bot numbers were. Their response was ‘we don’t really know.’”

Zatko further argued that Twitter executives “are not incentivized to accurately detect or report total spam bots on the platform,” as the number of growing mDAUs on the platform directly affects their performance bonuses.

The settlement was completed just days before Peiter Zatko filed his whistleblower complaint in July. Zatko was a prolific hacker who was hired as Twitter’s security head before being fired in January by new CEO Parag Agrawal. In his whistleblower complaint, Zatko alleged that Twitter failed to protect user data, refused to address warnings when raised with executives, and lied about its security issues.

Twitter’s confidential June settlement was related to Zatko’s lost compensation following months of mediation over tens of millions of dollars in potential pay, according to sources.

As part of the settlement, Zatko agreed to a nondisclosure agreement that forbids him from speaking publicly about his time at the company or disparaging the social media firm. Congressional hearings and government whistleblower complaints are two of the few circumstances in which he is permitted to speak openly.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.

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