By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
The letter did not mention a lawsuit, however, Musk threatened to seek legal redress if there is such a need when he first mentioned this violation back in April.
There appears to be a subtle data war brewing between Twitter Inc and American tech giant Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). This claim stems from the letter sent by Elon Musk’s personal lawyer Alex Spiro to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella over the misuse of access to social media’s API.
The Issue at Hand
The news was first reported by the New York Times which claims that Microsoft has been violating “multiple provisions” of the social media company’s developer agreement for an extended length of time. Twitter is accusing Microsoft of using its data APIs in 8 of its applications including Bing, xBox One, Azure, and Power Platform to mention a few.
Despite this extended usage, the Elon Musk team said appropriate permissions were only sought for two of the products. With Twitter notably adjusting its terms of use such that developers can generally pay for some of its data content, Microsoft pulled away from using the APIs sometime in April this year.
The letter claimed specifically there were “unauthorized uses and purposes” and that Microsoft failed to inform it of “any use case for six of the eight Microsoft Apps that it continued to operate until last month”.
“The Agreement makes clear that Microsoft was obligated to disclose and obtain approval for its intended use case for each Microsoft App, and to notify Twitter of any substantive modification to those use cases,” the letter reads, “Yet Microsoft did not identify any use case for six of the eight Microsoft Apps that it continued to operate until last month.”
The letter, having stated some of the perceived ways in which Microsoft violated its generosity also gave a very specific demand. This demand included a full “compliance audit” on all of the Microsoft apps that utilized Twitter’s data up until the time the support was shut down by the bigger tech giant. Microsoft was given until June 7th to comply with the demands.
The letter did not mention a lawsuit, however, Musk threatened to seek legal redress if there is such a need when he first mentioned this violation back in April.
Twitter’s Data Abuse: Microsoft Responds
The claim of Twitter’s data abuse has elucidated a response from Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw. In his response, Shaw said;
“Today we heard from a law firm representing Twitter with some questions about our previous use of the free Twitter API. We will review these questions and respond appropriately. We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with the company.”
Twitter has been pursuing a number of monetization options since the acquisition of the company by Elon Musk was finalized. In the age of ChatGPT’s Large Language Model (LLM) data training, Twitter’s current adjustment of its terms of use might turn out to be very profitable for it in the long term.