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Elon Musk says Twitter legal team told him he violated an NDA

FILE PHOTO: Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory groundbreaking ceremony in Shanghai

(Reuters) -Elon Musk on Saturday tweeted https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525615849167589380 that Twitter Inc's legal team accused him of violating a nondisclosure agreement by revealing that the sample size for the social media platform's checks on automated users was 100.

"Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100!" tweeted Musk, chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc.

Musk on Friday tweeted https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525049369552048129 that his $44-billion cash deal to take the company private was "temporarily on hold" while he awaited data on the proportion of its fake accounts.

He said his team would test "a random sample of 100 followers" on Twitter to identify the bots. His response to a question prompted Twitter's accusation.

When a user asked https://twitter.com/PPathole/status/1525292561816256512 Musk to "elaborate on process of filtering bot accounts," he replied https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1525304736538312707?s=20&t=2aqDR-hdkikuuHC__yzkdg: "I picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate."

Musk tweeted https://bit.ly/3sA0dhm during the early hours of Sunday that he is yet to see "any" analysis that shows that the social media company has fake accounts less than 5%.

He later said that "There is some chance it might be over 90% of daily active users."

(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat and Rachna Dhanrajani in Bengaluru; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Richard Chang and David Evans)