Twitter, certain portions of source code leaked online, according to Elon Musk
Twitter has confirmed that sections of its source code, which supports the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, have been made public on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned code-sharing service utilized by software developers. The code in question has since been removed after Twitter requested its removal.
According to reports, Elon Musk has informed Twitter employees that the company’s value is now less than half the $44bn (£36bn) he paid for it in 2020. As for the leaked source code, GitHub has declined to comment on its decision to remove the content, but it publicly discloses every Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take down request it receives to promote transparency.
The DMCA was signed into law in the US in 1998. It is aimed at protecting copyrighted material on the internet.
In the take down request, Twitter called on GitHub to provide information on who was behind the account which leaked the code – named Free Speech Enthusiast.
San Francisco-based Twitter said in the filing that the account had infringed copyrights owned by the company.
The leak creates a new challenge for Mr Musk, who has slashed Twitter’s workforce by more than a third and faced an exodus of advertisers since buying the platform in October last year.
Meanwhile, the Tesla chief executive has reportedly indicated that Twitter is now valued at less than $20bn.
The estimate of the company’s value was based on Mr Musk’s offer of stock grants to staff, according to technology news websites platform and the Information, which first reported the story.
Mr Musk also reportedly told staff: “I see a clear, but difficult, path to a >$250B valuation,” which suggests a more than tenfold increase in Twitter’s valuation.
In response to a BBC request for comment Twitter’s press office email account automatically responded with a poo emoji, an approach that Mr Musk announced in a tweet earlier this month.