Published , by Donovan Erskine
Published , by Donovan Erskine
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has seen no shortage of legal issues throughout his career, whether it be at his recently-acquired social media company or Tesla. Now, Musk may be on the brink of igniting a new legal conflict, this time with one of the world’s largest companies. After Microsoft decided to drop Twitter from its advertising platform, Elon Musk has threatened to sue the company.
In a statement earlier today, Microsoft announced that “starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter.” The tech giant’s decision to remove Twitter from its advertising platform came as a result of the social media company’s new fees for full access to its API. In response to a tweet reporting on the news, Musk stated that “[Microsoft] trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.”
In a subsequent tweet responding to questions about Twitter’s decision to paywall access to its API and the impact that can have on external links and embeds to the site, Musk said that “I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution.”
If Elon Musk does indeed file a lawsuit against Microsoft, it would be quite a big deal. One of the world’s richest men going after one of the largest companies would undoubtedly have ramifications for both Twitter and Microsoft. As of now, there has been no official legal filing against Microsoft on behalf of Twitter, and Microsoft has not responded to Musk’s threat to sue. We’ll be sure to update this story if and when new information becomes available.