Twitter shareholders have voted in favor of a deal with Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion (£38 billion).
The decision was made in a short conference call with investors from the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.
This means that Twitter will now try to force Elon Musk to buy the company in court.
The meeting was preceded by an explosive statement by former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko before the US Senate.
In April, Twitter agreed to sell the company to the world’s richest person, Elon Musk.
However, the deal fell through after Mr Musk claimed he had been misled by Twitter about the number of spam and bot accounts on the platform.
He said he no longer wants to buy the company in May, but Twitter argues that Mr Musk cannot walk out of the deal.
- Twitter is misleading the public, says a whistleblower
- Twitter spent $33 million on the Musk deal in three months
The social media platform claims that less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users (those who can view ads) are bots. Mr Musk argues that it could be many times higher.
Twitter is currently valued at $32 billion, well below Mr Musk’s $44 billion offer.
Today’s vote could have ended Twitter’s legal prosecution, but shareholders have now given the company the green light to pursue Mr Musk in court.
The two are scheduled to meet in October in a Delaware state court. During the hearing, a judge will decide whether or not Mr Musk needs to buy the company.
Immediately prior to the shareholder decision, Twitter whistleblower Pieter Zatko was in Washington to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about alleged security flaws.
He told US lawmakers the company was “misleading the public” about how safe the platform was.
The company’s former head of security said Twitter was “a decade behind on security standards.” Twitter says Mr Zatko has been fired from his job and that the claims are inaccurate.
Mr Zatko has previously supported Elon Musk’s claim that the platform has more spam and fake accounts than it has admitted – although he did not elaborate on this on Tuesday.
Last week, a judge said Mr Musk’s lawyers would be allowed to use the Twitter whistleblower’s testimony in court.
It mainly focused on national security issues – and is not officially linked to Mr Musk’s attempt to pull out of the deal to buy Twitter.
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