Twitter’s shareholders voted to approve a deal with Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion (£38 billion).
The decision was made during a brief conference call with investors at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
This means that Twitter will now try to force Elon Musk to buy the company in court.
The meeting came after former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko’s explosive testimony in front of the U.S. Senate.
In April, Twitter agreed to sell the company to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.
However, the deal turned sour after Musk claimed he was misled by Twitter about the number of spam and bot accounts on the platform.
He said he no longer wanted to buy the company in May, but Twitter argued that Musk could not back out of the deal.
The social media platform says that less than 5% of its profitable daily active users (those who can view ads) are bots. Mr. Musk thinks it could be many times higher.
Twitter is currently valued at $32 billion, well below Musk’s offer of $44 billion.
Today’s vote would have ended Twitter’s legal battle, but shareholders have now given the company permission to go after Musk in court.
The two will meet in October in front of a Delaware court. At the hearing, a judge will decide whether Musk must buy the company.
Just before the shareholders’ decision, Twitter whistleblower Pieter Zatko testified in Washington before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the alleged security breach.
He told U.S. lawmakers that the company was “misleading the public” about the platform’s security.
The company’s former head of security went on to say that Twitter’s security standards were “a decade behind”. Mr. Zatko was fired, Twitter said, and the claims were inaccurate.
Mr. Zatko has previously backed up Elon Musk’s claim that the platform has more spam and fake accounts than it admits – though he did not elaborate on that point Tuesday.
Last week, a judge said Mr. Musk’s lawyers would be allowed to use the Twitter whistleblower’s testimony in court.
It focuses mainly on national security issues – and is not formally linked to Musk’s attempt to back out of a deal to buy Twitter.