Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Monday that his office launched a Twitter investigation into its platform's number of bot accounts.
"Agents General Paxton has filed a civil inquiry (CID) request to investigate whether Twitter's reporting of genuine fake users was 'false, misleading, or fraudulent under the Texas Fraud Commercial Practices Act," the statement said.
Paxton required details on 23 items, including extensive data on daily, monthly, and active social media users. He also wants "sufficient documents to show the number of non-authentic Twitter accounts for each month in 2017, broken down by non-authentic account category (i.e., fake accounts, spammer accounts, and bot accounts)," if any.
Paxton, backed by former President Donald Trump, was indicted for securities fraud seven years ago but has yet to appear in court.
His Twitter probe began on the same day that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, through his lawyers, threatened to cancel their deal to buy Twitter for about $44 billion over concerns over fake accounts, spam, and bots.
In a letter sent to Twitter Monday, Musk's attorney said he had access to Twitter data that could help him determine how many bots are on the platform. The letter also states that Twitter "denies and voids" Musk's right to this information in a "clear material breach" of their merger agreement.
Marc Fagel, a securities law expert who previously served as regional director for the SEC's San Francisco office, said Paxton's announcement was somewhat unusual because such issues are not usually discussed at the state level.
"The state doesn't need to be equipped to carry out this kind of complex investigation," Fagel said. "It's one thing to do business with a local company, but when you talk about a national company that is publicly traded in another state, it's the provincial SEC.
