Twitter claims that portions of the source code that underpins the social media platform owned by multibillionaire Elon Musk have been published online in an unauthorized manner.
It states that the code can be found on GitHub, which is a service owned by Microsoft that allows software developers to share code.
Following a request for it to be removed made by Twitter, it has now been removed.
Separately, it has been reported that Mr. Musk has indicated to employees of Twitter that the company is worth less than half of the $44 billion (or 36 billion pounds) that he paid for it last year.
“In most cases, GitHub will not provide commentary regarding decisions to remove content. Nevertheless, in the interest of openness, we make public every DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] takedown request that we receive “The statement was made by a GitHub spokesperson to the BBC.
In 1998, the DMCA was passed into law in the United States. Its purpose is to safeguard content that is protected by intellectual property rights on the internet.
In the request to take down the account, Twitter asked GitHub to provide information about the person or people responsible for the FreeSpeechEnthusiast account, which was responsible for leaking the source code.
San Francisco-based In the filing, Twitter stated that the account in question had violated copyrights that were owned by the company.
Since purchasing the platform in October of last year, Mr. Musk has already reduced Twitter’s workforce by more than a third and is dealing with an exodus of advertisers. The leak presents him with a new challenge that he must overcome.
In the meantime, it has been reported that the chief executive of Tesla has indicated that the current valuation of Twitter is less than $20 billion.
According to two websites that report on developments in technology, Platformer and the Information, which were the first to break the story, the estimation of the company’s value was based on Mr. Musk’s offer of stock grants to staff members.
According to the report, Mr. Musk also told staff members, “I see a clear, but difficult path to a >$250B valuation.” This indicates a more than tenfold increase in Twitter’s valuation.
In response to a request for comment from the BBC, the press office email account for Twitter automatically responded with a poo emoji. This strategy was outlined by Mr. Musk in a tweet earlier this month.
