Elon Musk Has Twitter’s Data, but Getting Answers on Spam Accounts May Be Tougher

Elon Musk has gained access to the Twitter data that he said was needed to complete his $44 billion acquisition, but data scientists and specialists doubt the stream will provide the conclusive answers he seeks about the number of phony accounts on the platform.

After some legal back-and-forth between the two sides, Twitter in recent weeks provided Mr. Musk with historical tweet data and access to its so-called fire hose of tweets, people familiar with the matter said. That fire hose shows the full flood of all tweets—people post hundreds of millions of times a day on the platform, according to the company—in near real time.