Elon Musk and Twitter have just suffered a huge setback.
Pieces of the computer code used to run the platform have been hacked and published online, according to court documents.
"I submit this declaration in support of Twitter’s request for issuance of a subpoena to GitHub," a software collaboration platform, Julian Moore, Director and Associate General Counsel at Twitter, wrote in the documents which were filed on March 24 with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Moore said the purpose of the subpoena is "to identify the alleged infringer or infringers who posted Twitter’s source code on systems operated by GitHub without Twitter’s authorization, which postings infringe copyrights held by Twitter (the “Infringing Content”)."
GitHub Removed the Materials
The documents were posted on GitHub by a user whose name is "FreeSpeechEnthusiast", a name that appears to be a mockery of Musk who has described himself as an outspoken advocate of free speech. The billionaire had indicated that one of the reasons that led him to acquire Twitter for $44 billion was to make it a bastion of free speech.
"FreeSpeechEnthusiast" posted parts of Twitter's source code without the company's permission, the documents alleged. The social network want to identify the person or persons behind "FreeSpeechEnthusiast."
The purpose of the subpoena is "to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers, and such information will only be used for the purpose of protecting Twitter’s rights," Moore said.
Twitter asked GitHub to preserve and provide copies of any related upload/download /access history (and any contact info, IP addresses, or other session info related to same), and any associated logs, according to the court documents.
GitHub has already responded to Twitter's request to remove code from its platform under a copyright infringement claim.
"The following content has been disabled and the owners have been notified of the takedown. We will let you know if any of the users file a counter notice to have the content re-enabled," the platform told Twitter, according to the court documents.
GitHub also posted the request online. You can read it here.
Code Used to Recommend Tweets
There aren't many details about the pieces of code that were leaked.
According to the New York Times, Twitter has also launched an internal investigation to determine the author or authors of the leak. The publication of pieces of the source code of the platform is likely to make it vulnerable to hackers.
This leak adds to the problems of Twitter which is looking for new sources of income after many advertisers have paused the promotion of their products and services on the platform.
Musk has slashed Twitter's valuation based on new equity grants to employees last week. Twitter is now valued $20 billion while the billionaire had spent $44 billion at the end of October to take control of it.
In mid-March, Musk had indicated that Twitter would open source the code it uses to recommend tweets on March 31.
"Our 'algorithm' is overly complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!" the billionaire said on March 17. "We’re developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it’s still a work in progress. That’ll also be open source."
He continued: "Providing code transparency will be incredibly embarrassing at first, but it should lead to rapid improvement in recommendation quality. Most importantly, we hope to earn your trust."
