Microsoft-owned GitHub has removed a repository by a user named “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” that contained proprietary source code for Twitter after the social network filed a DCMA takedown request. The username certainly appears to be a joke against Twitter owner Elon Musk, who has claimed many times to be a “free speech absolutist.”
On Friday, Twitter filed a petition in Northern California court asking GitHub to remove the code and also help find the perpetrator. The subpoena asks GitHub to disclose name(s), address(es), phone number(s), email address(es), social media profile information, and IP address(es) associated with “FreeSpeechEnthusiast” to make.
The development comes days before March 31, when Musk will supposedly open source Twitter’s algorithm related to the recommendation.
It’s not clear what portion of Twitter was leaked on GitHub and for what duration. GitHub’s DCMA takedown blog just reported that it has removed the repository containing “Twitter platform proprietary source code and internal tools.”
The code hosting site did not say whether users had access to the repository before the company took it down. We’ve asked for a response and will update the story if we hear back.
Twitter may be concerned about copies of the code that may not exist on GitHub. Twitter’s internal investigation suggested that the people responsible for the leak left the company last year, according to a New York Times report. The story also suggested that the social network’s executives were only recently aware of the code leak.
The company is struggling after the acquisition of Musk last year. Recent reports suggest that the Tesla CEO now values Twitter at $20 billion – less than half of the $44 billion he paid for the social network. According to a New York Times report, Musk also wrote an email to employees announcing a new stock compensation program that said Twitter could be worth $250 billion one day.
To put Twitter’s finances in better order, Musk has taken radical measures to cut costs, including massive layoffs and the relaunch of a new subscription program that includes verification as one of the benefits. According to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, Twitter managed to raise just $11 million from this new service. By comparison, Twitter recorded $1.17 billion in revenue for Q2 2022.
At a recent conference, Musk said that users’ time on Twitter is poorly earned.
“The average amount of time people spend on Twitter each day is 250 million [monthly active users] is about half an hour or so. So what we have is — what I find most interesting — is there’s about 120 to 130 million hours of human attention per day on Twitter,” he said.
“Every day on average, which — I think it gets to a really interesting point — it’s just surprising how badly it’s monetized — because you have to say how valuable that attention is 100 to 130 million hours of human attention per day of people who read — so these are generally the smartest people in the world, the most influential people in the world.
As expected, when we reached out to Twitter, we got a poo emoji.